New Books In American Studies

From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her (Sourcebooks, 2026), the story of Lady Bird Johnson's groundbreaking trip during the 1964 election, and the women who rode with her. "It takes women to have guts." Deemed “the most important campaign effort ever undertaken by the wife of an American president,” the Lady Bird Special was a whistle-stop tour of the South undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson, in a bid for her husband’s reelection in 1964. Never before had a president’s spouse taken to the campaign trail so ambitiously. The 1,682-mile trek through the southern United States, from Washington DC to New Orleans, was a deliberate choice by Lady Bird—many in the southern states resented her husband’s championing of civil rights. But the first lady, proud of her southern heritage, wanted to appeal to her fellow southerners and bridge the divide. Despite the potential danger, she pressed forward, making s