The best of intentions
Subtitle: the triumphs and failures of the Great Society under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon
By: Irwin Unger.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 399
Subjects: Economic assistance, Domestic -- United States; United States -- Social policy; United States -- Politics and government -- 1961-1963; United States -- Politics and government -- 1963-1969; United States -- Politics and government -- 1969-1974
Description: The Best of Intentions explores the politics, the people, and the ins and outs of the Great Society programs - and how, inevitably, they began to go awry. Beginning with the Kennedy administration's early, futile efforts to alter the social landscape of poverty and education, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Irwin Unger traces the evolution of the Great Society programs and agenda, chronicling the relentless and savvy persistence of LBJ to push JFK's programs through - and make them his own.

Yet almost on the eve of his triumph, the foundation of the Great Society had already begun to shift and crumble.

Now, thirty years later, the Republican Congress is reconsidering those Great Society programs, arguing that they have grown to consume the national budget and reshape, to our detriment, social policy. An epic exploration of people and politics in an age of unrest, The Best of Intentions is the first comprehensive history of a legislative program that continues to dominate today's political scene.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [367]-387) and index.