Max Holland's book is important for two key reasons. First, it increases our understanding of the impact and legacy of one of the most searing events of twentieth-century American history: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Second, the book raises significant questions about listening to and transcribing presidential tapes. Any scholarly assessment of this book that fails to address these methodological issues would be, at best, incomplete, or at worst, pointless. Holland's work proves, in a level of detail never before possible, that Lyndon Baines Johnson's succession to the presidency on November 22, 1963, was the most traumatic in American history-more so than earlier presidential assassinations (1865, 1881, and 1901) because television permitted the American people and the world to become virtual participants in the event. An American born in 1850 could, by age 51, personally remember the assassinations of three presidents. But, by 1963, relatively few Americans could recall the shooting of William McKinley and the elaborate protection of the president seemed to rule out another assassination. Fortunately for historians, beginning on the evening of the day he took the presidential oath in Texas, Lyndon Johnson recorded nearly all his telephone conversations. It is almost impossible to communicate, in mere words, the degree to which these tapes capture LBJ's persona and leadership skills. Many historians have tried, for example, to describe the legendary "Johnson treatment." But, Holland's transcription of these tapes makes it possible to be a virtual ear-witness to that phenomenon. The "treatment" could include flattery, guile, humor, appeals to self-sacrifice and patriotism, deceit, armtwisting, and intimidation, but ultimately relied on LBJ's instinctive understanding of human nature. Johnson recognized that politics was first and foremost a living network of human relationships. He embodied, a former