Taking Charge brings you into the room with an Amercian political legend, still hated and revered a quarter century after his death. We hear Lyndon Johnson as he schemes and blusters, rewards, and punishes, 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 these tapes 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 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

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