Taking Charge, edited by Michael R. Beschloss, whom Newsweek has called "America's leading presidential historian," brings you into the room with an American political legend, still hated and revered a quarter century after his death. We hear Lyndon Johnson as he schemes and blusters, rewards and punishes, tells tales of Washington, D.C., and Texas, and reveals a bedrock core of unshakable political beliefs.

The only President to record his private conversations from his first day in office, LBJ ordered the tapes to be locked in a vault until at least the year 2023. But now they have been unsealed, providing a close-up look at a President taking power such as we have never had before -- from John F. Kennedy's murder in November 1963 to Johnson's campaign for a landslide victory.

Taking Charge is filled with revelations about the full-blooded Texan behind the public image. You will hear LBJ:

• revealing his self-doubts and personal anguish over the responsibilities of the presidency
• receiving the frank criticism of his wife, Lady Bird Johnson
• staking his presidency on a revolutionary civil rights bill
• scuttling Robert Kennedy's drive to be his Vice President
• using the Tonkin Gulf attack to expand the American beachhead in Southeast Asia
• unveiling his private, tortured early doubts that we could ever win a war in Vietnam

An extraordinary audiobook, Taking Charge gives us an uprecidented look into a crucial presidency that continues to shape our lives today. In LBJ's own words, it is history "with the bark off."