The Lyndon B. Johnson bibliography includes major books and articles about President Lyndon B. Johnson, his life, and presidential administration. Kent B. Germany in his review of the historiography noted in 2009 that Johnson has been the subject of 250 Ph.D. dissertations, well over one hundred books, and many scholarly articles. The New York Times and the Washington Post published 7600 articles on him during his presidency. Only a select subgroup are listed here, chiefly those reviewed by the major scholarly journals. Germany emphasizes the decline of Johnson's reputation: The man who was elected to the White House by one of the widest margins in U.S. history and pushed through as much legislation as any other American politician now seems to be remembered best by the public for succeeding an assassinated hero, steering the country into a quagmire in Vietnam, cheating on his saintly wife, exposing his stitched-up belly, using profanity, picking up dogs by their ears, swimming naked with advisers in the White House pool, and emptying his bowels while conducting official business. Of all those issues, Johnson's reputation suffers the most from his management of the Vietnam War, something that has overshadowed his civil rights and domestic policy accomplishments and caused Johnson himself to regret his handling of "the woman I really loved--the Great Society."
Secondary sources
Lerner, Mitchell B. A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson (2012), 29 scholarly articles with an emphasis on historiography excerpt
Biographies
Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon Johnson (4 volumes as of 2012): The Path to Power (1982); Means of Ascent (1990); Master of the Senate (2002); The Passage of Power (2012). The most detailed biography, extends to early 1964.
Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960 (1991); Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (1998); also: Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004). A 400-page abridged version of his 2 volume scholarly biography. Fernlund, Kevin J. Lyndon B. Johnson and Modern America (Vol. 25 of The Oklahoma Western Biographies). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. A short study of Johnson's career, with an emphasis on Texas and the American West (175 pages). Kearns Goodwin, Doris. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1977). A character study. Lerner, Mitchell B. A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson (2012), Scholarly essays on all aspects of Johnson's career Woods, Randall. LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (2006). A highly detailed scholarly biography (1000 pages).
Presidential years
Altschuler, Bruce E.; LBJ and the Polls U Presses of Florida, 1990
Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson 1994. Bornet, Vaughn Davis. The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. 1983 Burns, Richard Dean and Joseph M. Siracusa. The A to Z of the Kennedy–Johnson Era (2009) Cross, James C. Around the World with LBJ. 2008, Divine, Robert A., ed. The Johnson Years. Vol. 1: Foreign Policy, the Great Society and the White House. 1981; essays by scholars; excerpt Divine, Robert A., ed. The Johnson Years. Vol. 2: Vietnam, the Environment, and Science. 1987; essays by scholars Divine, Robert A., ed. The Johnson Years. Vol. 3: LBJ at Home and Abroad. 1994; essays by scholars Ellis, Sylvia. Freedom's Pragmatist: Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2013. Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965 (Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 2008). Firestone, Bernard J., and Robert C. Vogt, eds. Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Uses of Power. (1988); essays by scholars
Gould, Lewis L. Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment. 1988.
Hodgson, Godfrey. JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents (Yale UP, 2015) excerpt
Kalman, Laura. The Long Reach of the Sixties: LBJ, Nixon, and the Making of the Contemporary Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2017). Kesler, Charles, Alexander Riley, and Christopher Ellis. "Rethinking the Great Society and the LBJ Presidency: Charles Kesler." in Reflecting on the 1960s at 50 (Routledge, 2020) pp. 54-66.
Lichtenstein, Nelson, ed. Political Profiles: The Johnson Years. 1976. short biographies of 400+ key politicians. Longley, Kyle. LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval (2018) excerpt