Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-39% $15.99$15.99
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$13.50$13.50
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: All The Things Enterprises
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) Paperback – February 17, 1990
Purchase options and add-ons
The Path to Power, Book One, reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and urge to power that set LBJ apart. Chronicling the startling early emergence of Johnson’s political genius, it follows him from his Texas boyhood through the years of the Depression in the Texas hill Country to the triumph of his congressional debut in New Deal Washington, to his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, of the national power for which he hungered.
We see in him, from earliest childhood, a fierce, unquenchable necessity to be first, to win, to dominate—coupled with a limitless capacity for hard, unceasing labor in the service of his own ambition. Caro shows us the big, gangling, awkward young Lyndon—raised in one of the country’s most desperately poor and isolated areas, his education mediocre at best, his pride stung by his father’s slide into failure and financial ruin—lunging for success, moving inexorably toward that ultimate “impossible” goal that he sets for himself years before any friend or enemy suspects what it may be.
We watch him, while still at college, instinctively (and ruthlessly) creating the beginnings of the political machine that was to serve him for three decades. We see him employing his extraordinary ability to mesmerize and manipulate powerful older men, to mesmerize (and sometimes almost enslave) useful subordinates. We see him carrying out, before his thirtieth year, his first great political inspiration: tapping-and becoming the political conduit for-the money and influence of the new oil men and contractors who were to grow with him to immense power. We follow, close up, the radical fluctuations of his relationships with the formidable “Mr. Sam” Raybum (who loved him like a son and whom he betrayed) and with FDR himself. And we follow the dramas of his emotional life-the intensities and complications of his relationships with his family, his contemporaries, his girls; his wooing and winning of the shy Lady Bird; his secret love affair, over many years, with the mistress of one of his most ardent and generous supporters . . .
Johnson driving his people to the point of exhausted tears, equally merciless with himself . . . Johnson bullying, cajoling, lying, yet inspiring an amazing loyalty . . . Johnson maneuvering to dethrone the unassailable old Jack Garner (then Vice President of the United States) as the New Deal’s “connection” in Texas, and seize the power himself . . . Johnson raging . . . Johnson hugging . . . Johnson bringing light and, indeed, life to the worn Hill Country farmers and their old-at-thirty wives via the district’s first electric lines.
We see him at once unscrupulous, admirable, treacherous, devoted. And we see the country that bred him: the harshness and “nauseating loneliness” of the rural life; the tragic panorama of the Depression; the sudden glow of hope at the dawn of the Age of Roosevelt. And always, in the foreground, on the move, LBJ.
Here is Lyndon Johnson—his Texas, his Washington, his America—in a book that brings us as close as we have ever been to a true perception of political genius and the American political process.
- Print length960 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateFebruary 17, 1990
- Dimensions6.07 x 1.5 x 9.15 inches
- ISBN-100679729453
- ISBN-13978-0679729457
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
More items to explore
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
"A monumental political saga . . . powerful and stirring. It's an overwhelming experience to read The Path to Power." —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"Epic. A brief review cannot convey the depth, range and detail of this fascinating story. Caro is a meticulous historian. Every page reflects his herculean efforts to break through the banalities and the falsehoods previously woven around the life of Lyndon Johnson . . . combines the social scientist's interest in power with the historian's concern with theme and context, the political scientist's interest in system, and the novelist's passion to reveal the inner workings of the personality and relate them to great human issues . . . A monument of interpretive biography." —Michael R. Beschloss, Chicago Sun-Times Book Week
"Not only a historical but a literary event. An epic biography . . . A sweeping, richly detailed portrait . . . vivid [with] Caro's astonishing concern for the humanity of his characters. An awesome achievement." —Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek
"Stands at the pinnacle of the biographical art." —Donald R. Morris, Houston Post
"The major biography of recent years. Brilliant . . . Magisterial . . . Caro has given us an American life of compelling fascination. A benchmark beside which other biographies will be measured for some time to come." —Alden Whitman, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"An ineradicable likeness of an American giant. Caro has brought to life a young man so believable and unforgettable that we can hear his heartbeat and touch him. If an earlier famous Johnson had his Boswell, and Abraham Lincoln his Sandburg, LBJ has found a portraitist who similarly will owe his fame to his great subject and his certitude in taking control of it." —Henry F. Graff, Professor of History, Columbia University
"Splendid and moving. At this rate Caro's work will eventually acquire Gibbon-like dimensions, and Gibbon-like passion. . . . Caro is a phenomenon . . . an artful writer, with a remarkable power to evoke and characterize politicians, landscapes, relationships. This massive book is almost continually exciting." —Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
"By every measure—depth of research, brilliance of conception, the seamless flow of the prose—it is a masterpiece of biography." —Dan Cryer, Newsday
"Extraordinary. A powerful, absorbing, at times awe-inspiring, and often deeply alarming story. A vivid picture of the emergence of one of this century's authentically great politicians." —Alan Brinkley, Boston Sunday Globe
"The book races at Johnson's own whirlwind pace. A tour de force that blends relentless detective work, polemical vigor and artful storytelling into the most compelling narrative of American political life since All the King's Men." —Henry Mayer, San Francisco Chronicle
"A landmark in American political biography. The definitive life of LBJ. Caro has written a Johnson biography that is richer and fuller and may well be one of the freshest and most revealing studies ever written about a major historical figure." —Steve Neal, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"Magnificent. For understanding our recent past and the men and policies that brought the country to its present condition and aimed us toward whatever our future is to be, it's an immensely important work." —Bryan Woolley, Dallas Times Herald
"A brilliant and necessary book. There are whole and fascinating areas in Johnson's life that no one else discovered." —Merle Miller, front page, Chicago Tribune Book World
"This is a watershed book. Caro writes with sweep and passion. From the first sentence I was hooked. All other biographies of Johnson pale in comparison." —Joseph P. Lash
"Engrossing and revealing. This fascinating, immensely long and highly readable book is the fullest account we have—and are ever likely to have—of the early years of LBJ." —David Herbert Donald, front page, The New York Times Book Review
"A superb and unique biography . . . Meticulous in research, grand in scale, this is a major work that will remain a tower of its kind." —Barbara Tuchman
From the Inside Flap
Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, was a number one national best seller and, like The Path to Power, received the National Book Critics Circle Award.
From the Back Cover
Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, was a number one national best seller and, like The Path to Power, received the National Book Critics Circle Award.
About the Author
Caro’s first book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, everywhere acclaimed as a modern classic, was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. It is, according to David Halberstam, “Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.” And The New York Times Book Review said: “In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort.”
The first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, was cited by The Washington Post as “proof that we live in a great age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caro’s evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson’s unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually work, are—let it be said flat out—at the summit of American historical writing.” Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia University called the second volume, Means of Ascent, “brilliant. No review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.” The London Times hailed volume three, Master of the Senate, as “a masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age.” The Passage of Power, volume four, has been called “Shakespearean . . . A breathtakingly dramatic story [told] with consummate artistry and ardor” (The New York Times) and “as absorbing as a political thriller . . . By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think about, and read, American history” (NPR). On the cover of The New York Times Book Review, President Bill Clinton praised it as “Brilliant . . . Important . . . Remarkable. With this fascinating and meticulous account Robert Caro has once again done America a great service.”
“Caro has a unique place among American political biographers,” The Boston Globe said . . . “He has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured.” And Nicholas von Hoffman wrote: “Caro has changed the art of political biography.”
Born and raised in New York City, Caro graduated from Princeton University, was later a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and worked for six years as an investigative reporter for Newsday. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ina, the historian and writer.
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage (February 17, 1990)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 960 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679729453
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679729457
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.07 x 1.5 x 9.15 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #34,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in United States Executive Government
- #112 in US Presidents
- #160 in Political Leader Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and author known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson.
After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, which was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He has since written four of a planned five volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), a biography of the former president.
For his biographies, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, the National Book Award, the Francis Parkman Prize (awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that "best exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist"), two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the H.L. Mencken Award, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the D.B. Hardeman Prize, and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Larry D. Moore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Robert A. Caro's majestic Johnsonian triptych "The Years of Lyndon Johnson." is currently made up of "The Path to Power," which covers LBJ's life from his birth in 1908 until his first run for the U.S. Senate in 1941; "Means of Ascent," a chronicle of Johnson's years from 1941 to his second (and ultimately successful) Senate run in 1948; and "Master of the Senate," the critically acclaimed narrative of LBJ's 12-year career in the Senate (1948-1960). These three volumes are among the most critically acclaimed and highly honored biographies of all time. They've won three National Book Awards (one for each volume); a Francis Parkman Prize for best work of history (Volume 3); and a Pulitzer Prize for biography (also Volume 3.)
As I've already stated, "The Path to Power" covers Johnson's early life, from his birth in 1908 to an impoverished Texas Hill Country politician and his dreamy wife; through his upbringing, college education, early political career, and early years in the U.S. House of Representatives as a "complete Roosevelt man;" to his unsuccessful first run for the U.S. Senate in 1941.
Of the many premises in the first volume of Caro's triptych, two stand out as paramount: First, according to Caro, is that LBJ secretly harbors a burning ambition to become President of the United States, a craving for political power that apparently manifests itself in his teens, and from which he never wavers until he attains that high office. Caro's second premise is that LBJ is the antithesis of his highly principled, idealistic father, Sam Ealy Johnson. The elder Johnson is a superb politician, but also incapable of bringing prosperity to his family. As young Lyndon watches his father fail at nearly everything he does, he concludes that his father's high principles, tenacious dedication to the truth, and Populist idealism, lead to nothing but failure. Better to lie, say anything at all, in fact, to get what you want, if that's what it takes to be successful.
As a young adult, LBJ is thoroughly inculcated with those personality traits he thinks essential for success: a loud, vulgar, and abrasive manner; a calculating deceitfulness so pronounced he is derisively called "Bull" Johnson to his face by his peers; and a well developed ability to sycophantically curry favor from anyone he deems useful.
After college, it isn't long before opportunity knocks on LBJ's door, in the form of a job as secretary to the newly elected Representative from Johnson's Congressional district. He turns the novice congressman's office into a model of efficiency, all the while displaying a mammoth capacity for hard work. After a few years as the congressman's secretary, LBJ is appointed head of the National Youth Administration (NYA), one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's (FDR) New Deal bureaucracies. Johnson is the youngest of 48 state directors, and by all accounts, the most successful. His zeal, hard work, and efficiency deeply impress FDR. He soon becomes a favorite at the White House.
In 1937, Congressman James Buchanan of Texas' Tenth District, dies. He is a very senior and influential congressman who has the backing of several Texas contractors, including Herman and George Brown. At his death, Buchanan leaves a host of political and patronage "loose ends," including contracts for a new dam that's coveted by the Brown brothers. The Browns are convinced that LBJ is the man who can get the Federal government to award them the dam contracts. They convince him to run for Buchanan;s vacated seat, and they provide most of his financial backing. After a closely contested special election, in which LBJ once again demonstrates his now legendary capacity for hard work, he is improbably elected to the House over nine other candidates. He will remain a Congressman for eleven years.
In 1934, Johnson meets Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor, and, after a whirlwind courtship, marries her. From the very beginning, LBJ proves himself a despicable, almost abusive spouse. He peremptorily orders Lady Bird around in public. He cheats on her with a succession of women. He ignores her at parties. Yet, this painfully shy, plain, woman remains staunchly loving and loyal to her man.
Caro's portrait of LBJ the Congressman is decidedly negative. LBJ does much work on his constituents' behalf at first - bringing major construction projects to his district (almost all of them going to the Brown brothers and electric power to the Texas hill country. But he rarely, if ever, writes or sponsors legislation or makes speeches in the House. Still, he remains very popular among a grateful constituency.
In 1941, after four years in the House of Representatives, LBJ takes another step along the path to ultimate power: he decides to run in the special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the recently deceased Morris Sheppard. Johnson is barely known outside his own Congressional district. In the end, it comes down to a three-man race. LBJ loses by just over 1,300 votes in an election that is almost assuredly stolen from him. It's a lesson that LBJ will remember for the future...
Robert Caro, a journalist who is a virtuoso of research, and a master craftsman with the old typewriter he uses when writing, has painted a portrait of young Lyndon Baines Johnson that is rich, textured, filled with intricate detail, and scathing in its judgments. The pace of the tightly woven narrative never once flags. The prose is elegant, slightly ironic in tone, and written with an historian's eye for detail and a journalist's flair for the dramatic. I found the book so entertaining that it was nearly impossible to put down... the kind of book I found myself thinking about when I wasn't reading it, and anxiously awaiting the time when I could get back to it.
Now... on to the next volume of "The Years of Lyndon Johnson."
Robert Caro has attracted a lot of praise and awards for his monumental biography of LBJ, so far in 4 mighty volumes, a fifth yet to come. There is no question that the man and his times are worth a big bio, but at times there is too much detail, and too much space given to material of questionable relevance.
This first book covers the man's first 33 years, plus quite a bit about his ancestry. There are many strong passages, like those describing the malaise (climate and soil) of the Texas Hill Country, where LBJ grew up and where his father failed as a speculator and farmer. Also some strong passages about the corrupt political machinery in the state. Or the terribly hard life and work on farms without electricity. Or the impact of the depression on the Texas agriculture. Or the well intentioned but difficult bureaucracy of the New Deal.
I have no personal reason to root for young LBJ, but I find the lengths to which Caro goes in painting his subject black a little uncomfortable. An unpleasant child, a whiner, a bully. A difficult and demanding adolescent without redeeming points. A sycophant, a braggart, a notorious liar and a coward as a college student. Manipulation and treachery in his early politics. No real personal interests other than politics and self promotion, no attractive trait to the character. Not even any issues apart from 'power'. A boss from hell when he gets to have people under him. Subservience the key ability for an underling. Corrupt when he had a chance to cash in. What a creep. What a sorry subject for a biographer to spend years on.
Couldn't this first volume have been shrunk to normal dimensions of size and negativity? After all, what counts is hardly the flawed young man's character, but his ambivalent later performance as politician and president.
Caro was aware of this question. He raises this in self defense: the later man has not changed compared to his college years. His methods stayed the same. However, he got involved with causes and issues, which would have clouded the analysis of his methods. Ok,granted.
I was wondering where Caro was going. Is this another New Deal bashing? Quite to the contrary, Caro is a strong supporter of the New Deal, his report seasoned with cautionary and realistic observations. Roosevelt is an ambivalent hero, and LBJ becomes a part of new deal bureaucracy, a guy who gets things done, who moves the machinery. But he doesn't necessarily commit to the cause, he remains aloof in respect to ideological support. He speaks with different people differently, a classic opportunist. 'Lyndon goes which way the wind blows.' His first congressional campaign is to the point. He placed his bets fully on being 'Roosevelt's man', while in reality he was supported and paid by people with special interests in mind, who would consider Roosevelt a bolshevik.
What is the point in writing and reading political biographies? It can surely not lie in the details of a politician's private life. The potential interest lies in the issues of the time. A good biography is always partly a general history. This one here is a good biography, as much as I hated it at times.
Another conclusion: this political system is deeply flawed. It is built on nepotism and influence peddling. It is deeply corrupt. Money rules. Vote buying and election rigging are regular procedures. This kind of parliament can't possibly work properly. A typical third world country. Has it been improved since the 1930s and 40s?
Top reviews from other countries
1- Master of The Senate - Amazing stories of LBJ controlling the Senate as majority leader
2- Means of Ascent - the 1948 Senate race in Texas was fascinating and historical in hindsight
3-Path to Power - a great look at the young LBJ and is time as a Congressman
4- Passge to Power - cover LBJ as Vice President and his early days as President
I can't wait for the final installment.
Painstakingly researched over 7 years, 3 of which Robert Caro (with his wife Ina) actually moved to the Hill Country where LBJ was born to ingratiate himself amongst its inhabitants.
We're taken on a whirlwind tour starting from LBJs ancestors, a fascinating explanation on how LBJ grew up in poverty using the grass in the Hill Country as a touchstone, what caused him to have this extreme ambition and his ruthless tactics at achieving his goals...and above all his political genius. We go from a life of poverty to the San Marcos Southwest Texas Teachers University, a brief stint at a Mexican Teaching school in Cottula, on to becoming probably the most effective Congressional Secretary in political history to becoming a Congressman of the 10th District through sheer grit and perseverance. His scheming opportunism gives way and oscillates back and forth from his sincere and innate liberal idealism
I beseech you to give this a try, you won't be sorry. If anything for the chapter called Sad Irons alone...
Caro does a wonderful job -- this is a book you won't be able to put down. Truly one of the best biographies ever written.
The picture that emerges is rich, complex and detailed. Johnson got things done - he brought electricity to the Texas Hill Country (against the odds - people named their children after him - he had transformed their lives); and he seems through a later invention to have pretty much turned the 1940 Congressional elections in favour of the Democrats. But there's always a dark side - he has no clearly discernible principles (he seems like a model liberal to FDR but to hate the New Deal to his Texas big business backers - for whom he wins government contracts, and from whom he funds his campaigns). He will do whatever it takes to win power.
The years of research that inform this first volume of the biography are clear on every page. It's impossible really to question Caro's narrative or most of his judgements (he seems harsher on Johnson here than in Volume 4 - by which time he seems to have decided that Johnson did have some political beliefs - they were just extremely well hidden until he became President, for the most part). Only one aspect of Johnson's life I'd have liked to know more about - his increasingly frequent hospitalisations seem to be linked to brief depressive episodes. They aren't, however, quite treated as that - Caro makes clear that they are partly psychological - but doesn't delve into just what's going on at these times in Johnson's internal world.
It's a great read, though, and I'd very strongly recommend it to others.