WASHINGTON -- When University of Arkansas professor Randall Woods spoke at the Smithsonian about one of the towering figures of the 1960s, 100 people showed up, eager to hear about the nation's 36th president.
They lobbed questions at Woods for more than an hour, and then lined up afterward to buy copies of his new book: Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, The Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism.
Most of those in the lecture hall for the Smithsonian Associates lecture earlier this month were old enough to remember the Texas Democrat, who took office after John F. Kennedy's assassination and left office in the middle of a war.
Afterward, Woods autographed stacks of books and continued fielding questions about Johnson, a president who believed until the day he died he'd been a total failure.
"[Johnson] is tragic. He is tragic in the classic sense of the word. Well-intentioned, idealistic, noble to a certain extent, but a victim of his own weaknesses but more a victim of circumstances beyond his control," he said.
In his twilight, conservatives and liberals despised Johnson, though their reasons varied, Woods said.
"The left wouldn't forgive him for Vietnam," he said. "Hell, every academic my age marched in the anti-war movement. And for them, it's not a rational thing. It's the greatest moment of their lives. They're not going to give that up. They won't let that go. You can still see it."
Woods' latest book looks at Johnson's domestic agenda and the more than 1,000 pieces of legislation that passed during his time in office.
Many of the programs helped shape the country: Medicaid, Medicare, clean-water and clean-air laws, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, creation of the Job Corps, public radio and television and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Woods' book comes at a time when Johnson's role in history is being re-examined by authors and artists alike.
All the Way with LBJ, the 2014 Tony-winning drama, wrapped up a production in Washington earlier this month. And All the Way, a film adaptation of the play, debuted Saturday on HBO.
Mark Updegrove, director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, said people are reconsidering Johnson's place in history.
"I don't think there's any question that there has been historical re-evaluation of Lyndon Johnson and his presidency," he said.
"It takes us at least a generation to assess with some objectivity a president and his administration. And in Johnson's case, it has taken far longer because Vietnam divided us to such a great extent and it took so long for the passions around Vietnam to dissipate with the passage of years," he said.
Woods is making an important contribution to this area of study, Updegrove said.
"Randall Woods is a great scholar and has done some marvelous work on Lyndon Johnson and his life and times, so I'm confident that Prisoners of Hope will fall into that same pattern," Updegrove added.
Woods' 2006 book, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, was highly praised for its insight.
"Among Woods' many achievements in this fine biography is to allow us to see not only the enormous, tragic flaws in this extraordinary man, but also the greatness," Columbia University history professor Alan Brinkley wrote in The New York Times.
Woods' latest work, published last month by Basic Books, has drawn praise from academics, book reviewers and one of Johnson's key advisers.
Joseph Califano, Johnson's chief policy aide and a Cabinet secretary during Jimmy Carter's administration, wrote that Prisoners of Hope is "the most penetrating, lively and readable history of the birth pains of the Great Society's social and economic revolution ... "
Johnson "pushed, shoved and shoe-horned the government into American life" and Johnson's domestic agenda still "stokes the controversies that dominate the political and public policy landscape today," he wrote.
A native of Taylor, Texas, Woods grew up roughly 100 miles from Johnson's ranch. He went to Fayetteville in 1971 and the next year became an assistant professor; he's been affiliated with the university ever since.
In the 1990s, he wrote two books about J. William Fulbright, the former U.S. senator from Arkansas who clashed with Johnson over foreign policy.
"I had to write about Vietnam and about their relationship and I just got fascinated by Johnson," Woods said.
Over the years, he's been to Johnson's presidential library 30 to 35 times. He estimates he's spent two years studying there.
He won't have to camp out in Texas for his next project, however. After writing about modern history for most of his career, he's decided to dig deeper into the past.
"I've been living in the 20th century all of my academic life and I don't have anything else to say," he said.
Instead, he plans to write about the nation's sixth president, John Quincy Adams.
"It's fun to go back to the 19th and early 19th century. Different thought, different dress, different manners," he said. "I'm 71, so this will probably be my last go at it."
NW News on 05/23/2016