Lyndon Johnson cited passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the proudest moment of his presidency, and in JUDGMENT DAYS (Houghton Mifflin), Pulitzer prize—winning journalist NICK KOTZ puzzles together the complex alliance between LBJ and Martin Luther King Jr. that resulted in the landmark civil rights accomplishments of the sixties. Tapping into re-cently released archival materials, Kotz pegs Johnson as a New Deal disciple who seized the civil rights movement as the cornerstone on which he would build his Great Society and King as the contentious ally he chose to validate his agenda in the eyes of skeptical and impatient black Americans. Painstakingly researched, Judgment Days is a definitive look at the sweeping social victories of a presidency tarnished by the failures of Vietnam.
