Striving for The Great Society: L.B.J.'s Reshaping of the American Dream

Charles M.Haar's account of Lyndon Johnson's "Striving for the Great Society" is written with the insight of one who played an active role in the LBJ administration. Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law School, Charles M. Haar was a pioneer in land-use law whose scholarship focused on laws and institutions of city planning, urban development, and environmental issues. He was the chair of Johnson's newly formed National Task Force on the Preservation of Natural Beauty and also an organizer of the first White House conference on the environment. Haar was appointed by President Johnson to chair a commission on the formation and organization of a housing department and was a primary architect of the Model Cities Program. He was the first assistant secretary for metropolitan development in an initiative developed by the Johnson administration as a response to the urban riots the newly formed Department of Housing and Urban Development. As an author, he wrote the award-winning Suburbs under Siege. Mastering Boston Harbor: Courts, Dolphins, and Imperiled Waters and chronicled his involvement in a major 1982 environmental case, City of Quincy v. Massachusetts District Commission, which eventually led to the creation of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the successful cleanup of Boston Harbor.