The Fierce Urgency of Now:

Julian Zelizer and Jonathan Alter on LBJ

Thursday 08 January, 2015
6:30 - 8:15pm, $0

New America
199 Lafayette Street, Suite 3B

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The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts; the War on Poverty; Medicare and Medicaid; the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities – these are just a few of the programs Lyndon Johnson spearheaded in what became known as the most transformative agenda in American political history since the New Deal.

But his plans for a “Great Society” didn’t come without bitter resistance. While most recount this era as an unprecedented “liberal hour” in America, Julian Zelizer’s The Fierce Urgency of Now paints a more complex picture in which Congress, religious groups, media, political action groups, and activists often had divergent views about the legacies they would leave. Our politics may have changed, but in many ways the Great Society legislation remains a center of gravity for the country we live in today.

Join New America NYC for a conversation with Julian Zelizer and Jonathan Alter about the hard-fought path to the Great Society and the role its agenda continues to have on the political and policy landscapes today.

Copies of Julian Zelizer's The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society will be available for purchase.

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