Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Pick of 2006

It is the summer of 1965. The assassination of JFK has left John Dupre—and all of America— with Lyndon Baines Johnson, that Southern asshole with a public persona cut from an old rock and roll song: I RIDE FROM TEXAS TO ENFORCE THE LAW.

It's oppressively hot, the kind of heat that makes it practically impossible to do anything, or even think straight—and if John's brains aren't addled enough by the temperature, there’s the endless obsession with girls—th...