best lbj book recommendation?? preferably not too heavy on policy and more so on his character.
While Roberto Caro's four-volume (so far) biography is undoubtedly the gold standard for learning about LBJ's life and career, it seems like you're looking for something that doesn't average 1,000 pages per book, which is understandable.
Fortunately, there is a perfect book for what it seems like you're most interested in. Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) is one of the best biographies ever written about a President. It's an astonishingly revealing look at who LBJ was as a human being -- deeply personal and endlessly fascinating. Goodwin spent part of LBJ's post-Presidency helping him prepare his memoirs -- The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969 -- and found herself frustrated because LBJ was so obsessed with coming across as "Presidential" that the book watered down his colorful personality, incredible storytelling ability, and otherworldly political insight. After LBJ's death in 1973, Goodwin wrote Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, which gives readers an unvarnished look at a political genius whose life was immensely complicated by the intensity of his ambition and his frequently crippling insecurity.
The subtitle of Goodwin's book is "The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written" and it is not an exaggeration. If what you want is a book about LBJ as a person, you don't have to go any further than Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO). I think it's one of the two or three best books EVER written about a President of the United States.
