In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson announced his vision of the Great Society, a plan to use the power of the national government to create a better society. Johnson's Great Society was all-encompassing, but the debate about its particulars centered on specific questions dealing with civil rights, poverty, federal aid to education, health care, and the proper role of the national government and its appropriate limitation. This work describes the lives of the individuals involved in these debates and presents their varying perspectives on these issues. Readers will understand how both these individuals' lives and the times in which they found themselves living shaped their political and philosophical views. Biographies include Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., Strom Thurmond, and Edith Green. An introductory essay, an appendix of shorter entries on additional figures, and a bibliography are also included.

The Shapers of the Great Debate series takes a biographical approach to history, following the premise that people make history in the circumstances in which they find themselves. Each volume in this series examines the lives and experiences of the individual's involved in a particular debate through major and minor biographies.

Lawson Bowling is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of History at Manhattanville College.