American History Too!

It's the fourth installment of our series on Lyndon Johnson's America and we are into crisis mode.

We pick up the story in mid-1967 and discuss how Vietnam, racial violence, and a host of other contentious issues rise to the fore and overwhelm Lyndon Johnson, leading to his eventual withdrawal from office.

Along the way we compare 1967/8 with today's political climate, discuss race riots, Tet, the media, the counterculture, second-wave feminism and much more.

Thanks again for listening.

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

Reading List

Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (2014)

Amy Wedlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. (1993)

Daniel Hallin, The 'Uncensored War':The Media and Vietnam (1986)

Christopher Gair, The American Counterculture (2007)

It's the third in our series of 30 minute discussions of random US history topics beginning with a letter of the alphabet.

Today - it's R!

Republicans

Rambo

Red Scare

Republican Motherhood

...are just a few of things that we chew over.

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

It's Part 3 of Lyndon Johnson's America and we arrive at the event which arguably shaped LBJ's presidency more than anything else - the Vietnam War.

In this episode, we cover the early years of the conflict (1964-67) and discuss:

Why Vietnam?

Why does Johnson escalate in 1965?

What role do race and gender play during the Vietnam War?

The early anti-war movement

American strategic mistakes in Vietnam

In next month's episode we'll examine The Downfall as Johnson's America comes apart as a result of events at home and abroad.

Thanks again for listening!

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

Reading List:

Heather Stur, Beyond Combat: Women and gender in the Vietnam War era (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Daniel Lucks, Selma to Saigon: The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War (University of Kentucky Press, 2014)

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012)

Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (New York: HarperCollins, 2018)

It's the second of our episodes where we discuss a series of events, people, and places drawn at random that begin with a specific letter. And today's letter is H!

Fannie Lou Hamer

Adolf Hitler

Jimi Hendrix

Hollywood

and many, many more!

We'll be back next month with another episode of A-Z!

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

On the second episode of Lyndon Johnson's America, we encounter an optimistic America. A United States prospering and beginning to deal with its original sin of racism. We delve into civil rights victories and Johnson's pursuit of a Great Society. But we also discuss the rise of television, the British Invasion led by the Beatles, and America's pursuit of putting a Man on the Moon.

This episode will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy. Enjoy it, things are about to hit the proverbial fan.

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

It's a new podcast!

The idea is simple. We've written down loads of names/events/developments that relate to American History that begin with the same letter. They have been scrunched up in a hat, they are picked at random, and we have 30 minutes to discuss whatever comes out the hat.

And today, we're all about the letter C!

We discuss everything from Lewis and Clark to China, Civil Rights to the CIA. And much more!

We hope you enjoy this new type of podcast. We plan to publish a new one every month alongside our main podcast.

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

(OUR APOLOGIES FOR THE SOUND QUALITY ON THIS EPISODE - ROGUE MICROPHONE ISSUE)

We're back!

And we're embarking on a six part series examining 'Lyndon Johnson's America'. Essentially, we're using the life and times of LBJ to examine and explore the United States over which he presided in the tumultuous 1960s.

This episode, however, explores the ascent of Johnson up the political ladder, while simultaneously discussing a host of interesting events and developments between 1936-1963. We discuss the Cold War Consensus, the use of the Atom Bomb, the 'loss of China', the Kennedy-Johnson relationship, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and much more!

In the next episode we'll be talking all about the Civil Rights Movement and the early success of Johnson's presidency. Moreover, as the series goes on, we'll get stuck into the societal and cultural developments that shook America in the 1960s.

Thanks for sticking with us after our hiatus and we'll be back regularly in your podcast feeds with both this series and our new A-Z podcast!

Cheers

Mark and Malcolm

Reading list:

Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson series (Knopf, 4 Books)

Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)

Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2018)

Audra J. Wolfe, Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)

On this month's A-Z, we tackle the letter 'W' for 30 minutes, including discussion of:

World War I & II

Watergate

The West Wing

Victoria Woodhull

And even, William Wallace.

We hope you enjoy and we'll be back soon with the penultimate episode in our LBJ's America series.

Cheers,

Mark