THE VANTAGE POINT: PERSPECTIVES OF THE PRESIDENCY 1963-1969 Inscribed to Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach by JOHNSON, Lyndon B - (1971)

New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, (1971). First Edition. Hardcover. Typical wear to this terrible choice for a binding with some separation of the covers and cracking of the leather with some splitting to the front hinge and light foxing to bulked text edges. Most copies of this scarce book that we have seen over the years have been heavily repaired or rebound. This copy is untouched and still Good and stable with a great inscription. Good in a Fine clamshell box. Bound in publisher's flimsy and impractical padded red leather housed in a custom-made cloth clamshell box backed with a gilt-lettered red morocco leather spine. Illustrated with photographs. Copy #99 of 300 SIGNED by the author on the limitation page. In addition, LBJ has filled the dedication page with a superb INSCRIPTION to Johnson's Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and his wife Lydia "a pair who gave their all-- to/their Country and their President/ably and well-- with appreciation and affection/Lyndon B. Johnson." Katzenbach is cited about 20 times in the index.

Nicholas Katzenbach was famously sent by President Kennedy to Alabama to confront Governor George Wallace in the federal desegregation of the University of Alabama when Wallace threatened to block the registration of two African American students to the all-white university on 11 June 1963, an incident known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door." Katzenbach and the federalized National Guard confronted Wallace on the steps of Foster Auditorium, where the registration was to take place, and eventually Wallace backed down. That night Kennedy addressed the nation: “If an American, because his skin is dark cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for public officials who represent him, if in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, the who among us would be content to have the color of skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay.” Katzenbach also, as Kennedy's Deputy Attorney General, called Johnson after Kennedy's Assassination to dictate the wording of the oath of office that Johnson was to take shortly after and later provided advice that led to the creation of the Warren Commission. Johnson would later direct Katzenbach to draft a Civil Rights bill which eventually passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most sweeping civil rights legislation in the nation's history.