The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 105, July 2001 - April, 2002 Page: 523

Book Reviews

Roosevelt, were cultural and social leaders. Others, like Edith Wilson, assumed
quasi-presidential duties. Most significantly, Eleanor Roosevelt, more than any
other previous occupant, redefined the role with her independent style, outspo-
ken qualities, and heightened visibility.
According to Gould, following Eleanor Roosevelt's tenure, Lady Bird Johnson
was the most activist presidential wife. Beginning in 1964 she searched for a
theme to guide her White House years. A western trip to several Indian reserva-
tions and national parks rekindled her enthusiasm for natural beauty-an issue
that made her "heart sing" even as a young girl in East Texas. She therefore
began to focus on the environment, especially initiatives on behalf of beautifica-
tion and conservation.
As presidential wife, political advisor, and trusted confidant, Lady Bird Johnson
helped launch a public environmental movement in the 1960s. According to
Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, she single-handedly "influenced the president
to demand-and support-more far-sighted conservation legislation" (p. 36).
She worked to beautify the nation's capital by planting thousands of bulbs, found-
ed the White House Natural Beauty Conference, and lobbied Congress for envi-
ronmental programs. She also campaigned to reduce roadside blight and curb
the spread of billboards with the Highway Beautification Act of 1965-the first
piece of legislation specifically identified with a first lady.
Despite its success, the beautification campaign suffered from two major prob-
lems. First, the term "beautification" never accurately described the Great
Society goal to protect the quality of American life; it sounded too "cosmetic and
trivial" (p. 54). Second, its critics complained that beautification of the nation's
monuments failed to address difficult inner-city problems; it never "affected the
intrinsic ills of the city and its black ghetto" (p. 87).
As the inaugural volume in the modern first ladies series, Lady Bzrd Johnson is a
concise, well-researched addition to an ever-expanding new research field.
Although Gould vacillates on Johnson's ranking vis-t-vis Eleanor Roosevelt (pp.
ix, 129), he effectively chronicles the evolution of the environmental movement
under the tutelage of Mrs. Johnson-a remarkable feat considering the gen-
dered society of 196os politics.
University of Texas at San Antonio MARY L. KELLEY
Clayton's Galveston: The Architecture of Nicholas J. Clayton and His Contemporaries. By
Barrie Scardino and Drexel Turner. (College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 2000. Foreword, preface, introduction, notes, index. ISBN
o-89o96-881-o. $45.00, cloth.)
The material culture of any city or civilization in any given period, in this book
Galveston from 1865 to 1900oo, is among the best indices to its character and aspi-
rations, and of all the aspects of material culture, from textiles and posters to
furniture, architecture is the most public, the most inexorably representative,
embedded as it is in the technology and imagination of its time and place.
Scardino and Turner, using the architecture of Nicholas J. Clayton (1840-1916)

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