It’s an unforgivable ‘if not for…’, but here goes: if not for Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson would have been one of the greatest American presidents of all time. But Vietnam happened, and Johnson’s pride and warped view of what ‘defeat’ would mean for America’s international standing and relations meant tens of thousands of appallingly unnecessary deaths. His greatness though is powerfully on view in The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon Johnson—Passing of the Civil Rights Act (June 23 to July 4 1964) the eighth volume of transcripts of Johnson’s Oval Office conversations. The indefatigable seduction, bullying and cajoling, his tremendously affectionate nature (readily telling people how much he loved them, whether they were family, colleagues or adversaries), and his political intelligence and savvy are all woven through this verbatim testimony. And, as we know, against huge odds he got the Civil Rights Act passed. I love biography, memoirs and diaries and the horse’s mouth account is irresistible to me, though I’ve cheated on this series of books, leapfrogging to Volume 7 after reading Volume 1—the recordings of Johnson’s conversations that took place from Air Force One on the tarmac in Dallas on 23 November 1963, through to the Oval Office on Saturday November 30.

Described as ‘the first unified theory of storytelling’, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall is, to me, literary bliss, mixing the scientific, historical and emotional reasons why we simply have to tell, and hear, stories. As we position Melbourne Theatre Company as Melbourne’s home of live storytelling, I am obsessively absorbing as much as I can around the subject. The good news is that the live experience—storytelling through theatre, song, public address, whatever—can never be threatened by screen or digital culture, since for millennia past and millennia to come, we will always need to gather with members of our ‘tribe’ around a literal or metaphorical campfire to tell and be told.