A White House diary

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Near Fine. Association copy, inscribed on the sage-green front free endpaper (not on a bookplate, like most copies): "For Josie and Walter Bruce -- Who share my devotion to the national park service, Lady Bird Johnson." Walter Taylor Bruce, Jr., was a National Park Service historian who served as the superintendent (director) at a number of NPS sites, most significantly, in terms of this book, at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Site near Austin, Texas, where he was the inaugural superintendent from 1970-1972. No doubt the Johnsons and the Bruces got to know each other for that reason. Once known as the Texas White House because LBJ spent about 20 percent of his time in residence there while in office, the site is now a National Historical Park, protecting the birthplace, home, ranch, and grave of LBJ. Lady Bird Johnson is also buried there. Lady Bird Johnson s commitment to the National Park Service goes well beyond this connection. She was known as the environmental First Lady, instrumental in the support of over 200 environmental laws passed during LBJ s administration, including the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Beautification was her focus, but it meant much more that it suggests (and she had her concerns about the word). As she described it, beautification was "picking up a tangled skein of wool; all the threads are interwoven -- recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate and rapid transit and the war on poverty, and parks -- everything leads to something else." After leaving the White House, she served for many years on the council of the National Park Service's Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings and Monuments. Richard Nixon dedicated the Lady Bird Johnson Grove in Redwood National Park in 1969 in recognition of her conservation and environmental work, and there is also an NPS-managed island in the Potomac River named the Lady Bird Johnson Park. She was such a strong advocate for expansion and improvement of the national park system that Secretary of Interior Stuart Udall called her "a second secretary of the interior in the White House." This diary is an abridged version of the one she kept throughout her five years in the White House, and includes her reports on her environmental activities and much else. As for Walter Bruce, he also served as superintendent at Fort McHenry National Monument, Maryland; Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, Alabama; and Fort Frederica National Monument, Georgia. A very good plus book (and a big book at about 800 pages) on account of a speckling foxing to upper and outer text block faces, otherwise about fine; in a very near fine jacket with one very small, clean tear at top of spine, now in mylar. A nice association. // Wood (+) River (=) Books specializes in ecology, natural history, nature writing, the environment, and environmental literature, with a special passion for association copies and notable inscriptions.