(OUR APOLOGIES FOR THE SOUND QUALITY ON THIS EPISODE - ROGUE MICROPHONE ISSUE) We're back! And we're embarking on a six part series examining 'Lyndon Johnson's America'. Essentially, we're using the life and times of LBJ to examine and explore the United States over which he presided in the tumultuous 1960s. This episode, however, explores the ascent of Johnson up the political ladder, while simultaneously discussing a host of interesting events and developments between 1936-1963. We discuss the Cold War Consensus, the use of the Atom Bomb, the 'loss of China', the Kennedy-Johnson relationship, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and much more! In the next episode we'll be talking all about the Civil Rights Movement and the early success of Johnson's presidency. Moreover, as the series goes on, we'll get stuck into the societal and cultural developments that shook America in the 1960s.  Thanks for sticking with us after our hiatus and we'll be back regularly in your podcast feeds with both this series and our new A-Z podcast! Cheers Mark and Malcolm Reading list: Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson series (Knopf, 4 Books) Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2018) Audra J. Wolfe, Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices