Of all the challenges Lyndon Johnson faced when he became president in 1963, none would hound him more than the question of what to do in Vietnam. LBJ was an expert politician, and he had a vision for a new, New Deal America. But he could not figure out how to win the war in Vietnam, or pull the United States out.

If there were one single tool of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, it was the telephone. "As president, Lyndon Johnson used the telephone like an assault weapon," writes historian William Doyle. "He didn't just pick up the telephone, he grabbed the telephone," a witness to Johnson's phone style said. Former aides recall Johnson practically crawling through the wire to bully, cajole, and persuade people.