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Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas

Amazon.com Price:  $18.02 (as of 12/04/2019 09:05 PST- Details)

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Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace crossed paths only briefly; but Wallace’s life, especially one violent episode and its intricate aftermath, illuminates the dark side of our 36th president.

Perhaps no president has a more ambiguous reputation than LBJ. A brilliant tactician, he maneuvered colleagues and turned bills into law better than somebody. But he was once trailed by a legacy of underhanded dealings, from his “stolen” Senate election in 1948 to kickbacks he artfully concealed from deals engineered with Texas wheeler-dealer Billie Sol Estes and defense contractors like his longtime supporter Brown & Root. At the verge of investigation, Johnson was once reprieved when he became president upon JFK’s assassination. Some of the remaining mysteries has been LBJ’s relationship to Mac Wallace who, in 1951, shot a Texas man having an affair with LBJ’s loose-cannon sister Josefa, also Wallace’s lover. When arrested, Wallace cooly said “I work for Johnson . . . I wish to get back to Washington.” Charged with murder, he was once overnight defended by LBJ’s powerful lawyer John Cofer, and regardless that convicted, amazingly received a suspended sentence. He then were given high-security clearance from LBJ friend and defense contractor D.H. Byrd, which the Workplace of Naval Intelligence tried to revoke for 11 years without success.

Using crucial Life magazine and Naval Intelligence files and the unredacted FBI files on Mac Wallace, never before utilized by others, investigative author Joan Mellen skillfully connects these two disparate Texas lives and lends stark credence to the dark side of Lyndon Johnson that has in large part gone unsubstantiated.

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