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The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV Paperback – May 7, 2013

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,476 ratings

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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZE

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the
Times of London to acclaim it as “one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece.”

The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career—1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin’s bullet to reach its mark.

By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro gives us an unparalleled account of the machinations behind both the nomination and Kennedy’s decision to offer Johnson the vice presidency, revealing the extent of Robert Kennedy’s efforts to force Johnson off the ticket. With the consummate skill of a master storyteller, he exposes the savage animosity between Johnson and Kennedy’s younger brother, portraying one of America’s great political feuds. Yet Robert Kennedy’s overt contempt for Johnson was only part of the burden of humiliation and isolation he bore as Vice President. With a singular understanding of Johnson’s heart and mind, Caro describes what it was like for this mighty politician to find himself altogether powerless in a world in which power is the crucial commodity. 

For the first time, in Caro’s breathtakingly vivid narrative, we see the Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnson’s eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within weeks—grasping the reins of the presidency with supreme mastery—he propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of Kennedy’s death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without doubt Johnson’s finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam.

In its exploration of this pivotal period in Johnson’s life—and in the life of the nation—
The Passage of Power is not only the story of how he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest purpose of the presidency but is, as well, a revelation of both the pragmatic potential in the presidency and what can be accomplished when the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation. It is an epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caro’s work, confirming Nicholas von Hoffman’s verdict that “Caro has changed the art of political biography.”
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Editorial Reviews

Review

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZE

“Brilliant . . . Important . . . Remarkable . . . In sparking detail, Caro shows Johnson’s genius for getting to people—friends, foes, and everyone in between—and how he used it to achieve his goals . . . With this fascinating and meticulous account Robert Caro has once again done America a great service.”
—President Bill Clinton,
The New York Times Book Review (front cover)

“By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think, and read, American history . . . Although the amount of research Caro has done for these books is staggering, it’s his immense talent as a writer that has made his biography of Johnson one of America’s most amazing literary achievements . . . Caro’s chronicle is as absorbing as a political thriller . . . There’s not a wasted word, not a needless anecdote . . . Most impressively, Caro comes closer than any other historian could to explaining the famously complex LBJ . . . Caro’s portrayal of the president is as scrupulously fair as it is passionate and deeply felt . . . The series is a masterpiece, unlike any other work of American history published in the past. It’s true that there will never be another Lyndon B. Johnson, but there will never be another Robert A. Caro, either.” —Michael Schaub, NPR 

“A breathtakingly dramatic story about a pivotal moment in United States history [told] with consummate artistry and ardor . . . It showcases Mr. Caro’s masterly gifts as a writer: his propulsive sense of narrative, his talent for enabling readers to see and feel history in the making and his ability to situate his subjects’ actions within the context of their times . . . Caro manages to lend even much-chronicled events a punch of tactile immediacy . . . Johnson emerges as both a larger-than-life, Shakespearean personage—with epic ambition and epic flaws—and a more human-scale puzzle . . .  Mr. Caro uses his storytelling gifts to turn seemingly arcane legislative maneuvers into action-movie suspense, and he gives us unparalleled understanding of how Johnson used a crisis and his own political acumen to implement his agenda with stunning speed. Taken together the installments of Mr. Caro’s monumental life of Johnson form a revealing prism by which to view the better part of a century in American life and politics.” 
—Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times

“A great work of history . . . A great biography . . . Caro has summoned Lyndon Johnson to vivid, intimate life.” —
Newsweek
 
“Making ordinary politics and policymaking riveting and revealing is what makes Caro a genius. Combined with his penetrating insight and fanatical research, Caro’s Churchill-like prose elevates the life of a fairly influential president to stuff worthy of Shakespeare . . . Reading Caro’s books can feel like encountering the life of an American president for the first time . . . Caro’s judgment is solid, his prose inspiring, and his research breathtaking . . . Robert Caro stands alone as the unquestioned master of the contemporary American political biography.”
—Jordan Michael Smith,
The Boston Globe

“A meditation on power as profound as Machiavelli’s.” —Lara Marlowe,
Irish Times
 
“One of the most compelling political narratives of the past half-century . . . A vivid picture of how political power worked in the US during the middle of the 20th century at local, state and national level . . . This extraordinary work will remain essential reading for decades to come.” —Richard Lambert,
Financial Times
 
“Unrivaled . . . Caro does not merely recount. He beckons. Single sentences turn into winding, brimming paragraphs, clauses upon clauses tugging at the reader, layering the scenery with character intrigue and the plot with historical import. The result is irresistible . . .
Passage covers with all the artistry and intrigue of a great novel events that are seared in the nation’s memory. In an era defined by fragmented media markets, instantaneous communication, gadflies and chattering suits, Caro stands not merely apart, but alone.”
—William Howell,
San Francisco Chronicle
 
“The greatest political biography ever written . . . The most sweeping historical tour de force since Gibbons’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . . . Caro has imprinted himself into history. His work is now the benchmark of political biography.” —Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald

“Riveting . . . Masterful . . . An insightful account of what it means and what it takes to occupy the Oval Office.” —Steve Paul,
The Kansas City Star

“Robert Caro is the essential chronicler of these times: And these times should never be forgotten.” —Joel Connelly,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Caro’s masterpiece of biography . . . His strength as a biographer is his ability to probe Johnson’s mind and motivations . . . Riveting . . . A roller-coaster tale.”
The Economist

“The latest in what is almost without question the greatest political biography in modern times . . . Nobody goes deeper, works harder or produces more penetrating insights than [Caro].” —Patrick Beach,
Austin American-Statesman
 
“The politicians’ political book of choice . . . An encyclopedia of dirty tricks that would make Machiavelli seem naïve.” —Michael Burleigh
, London Literary Review

“Majestic . . . The reporting is copious, the writing elegant and energetic, the sentences frequently rushing forward themselves like mighty rivers. Four books, and nearly four decades, into this vast project, Caro’s commitment to excellence has not wavered or even slackened; the reader can feel the sheer force of his effort on every page.” —Ronald Brownstein
, Democracy

“By dramatizing the capacities and limitations of the most talented politician of the postwar era, Caro aims to make readers shrewder citizens . . . As a student of power, Caro is a Machiavelli for democrats, who instead of addressing the prince, addresses the people.” —Thomas Meaney,
The Nation
 
“Astonishing and unprecedented . . . a work of real literature, among the best nonfiction works ever . . . His books . . . argue that things happen because certain people with power want them to happen . . . It is not inconceivable to think that, without the presence of LBJ and the influence on him of his character and his experiences, none [of the civil rights bills] would have won Congressional approval . . . More than operatic, Caro’s Johnson books deserve another adjective, one that matches his genius, his sensitivity and his ambition: Shakespearean.”
—Patrick T. Reardon

 
“The best biography I’ve ever read . . . Incredibly well-written, with the tension and drama of a compulsive thriller, and the style of an elegant novel. Caro’s books aren’t just about politics, or just about Lyndon Johnson. His books are about America, its culture, its history, and its society. Above all, Caro’s books are about power, how to achieve it and make it multiply; how to use power and how to lose it.” —Michael Crick, UK Channel 4 News
 
“My book of the year, by a landslide majority, was
The Passage of Power. The adjective ‘Shakespearean’ is overused and mostly undeserved but not in this case. LBJ emerges from this biography as a fully rounded tragic hero: cowardly and brave, petty and magnificent, vindictive and noble, a man of vaunting ambition and profound insecurities. Caro marries profound psychological insight with a brilliant eye for the drama of the times.” —Robert Harris, The Guardian (London)

“Caro is a genius at delineating character, and not just that of the deliciously complicated LBJ. He investigates, among other larger-than-life figures, the Kennedy brothers, the powerful and unbending Harry Byrd of Virginia, and the clownlike but devoted Bobby Baker . . . Caro’s use of strong image and repetition, almost hypnotic in combination, is breathtakingly effective. Caro is a great historian, but if the purpose of art is to stimulate thought and arouse emotion, he is also a great artist.” —Rosemary Michaud,
Charleston Post and Courier

“A portrait of executive leadership so evocative as to be tactile.”
—Robert Draper
, Wall Street Journal

“The only superstar biographer in the world . . . Caro’s [books] transform biography into something new, a tour de force of structured political opinion writing . . . A single theme emerges: the insidious ways that clever politicians can gather and abuse power—sometimes for good, sometimes for evil—in a modern democratic society.”  —Levi Asher, Literary Kicks
 
“One of the greatest biographies in the history of American letters.”
—Bob Hoover,
Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“As riveting as a thriller . . . The next book will crown an achievement in presidential biography unmatched among presidential histories.”
—David Hendricks,
Houston Chronicle

“Every page [of The Years of Lyndon Johnson] is compelling. For many politicians it is the finest book on politics . . . The ultimate political story.”
—Daniel Finkelstein,
London Times
 
“Long live Robert Caro . . . Truly epic political history and character study . . . Riveting . . . It elevates Caro’s tale to Shakespearean drama, as the coldhearted, Machiavellian maneuvering and hot-blooded rivalries of supremely ambitious men play out with the fate of the free world at stake.”
—Dan DeLuca,
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Brilliant . . . A masterclass in political management . . . Caro not only re-creates one of the giants of modern politics, he tells a giant tale about power and about life itself.” —Andrew Adonis,
New Statesman
 
“A masterly how-to manual, showing Johnson’s knowledge of governing, his peerless congressional maneuvering and effective deal-making. The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a compact library: brilliant biography, gripping history, searing political drama and an incomparable study of power. It’s also a great read . . . And, after thousands of pages spent with Lyndon Johnson, one of Caro’s singular achievements is that you want more.” —Peter Gianotti,
Newsday

“The Years of Lyndon Johnson, when completed, will rank as America’s most ambitiously conceived, assiduously researched and compulsively readable political biography . . . When Caro’s fifth volume arrives, readers’ gratitude will be exceeded only by their regret that there will not be a sixth.” —George F. Will
 
“This book shows the mastery of Johnson in politics, and also the mastery of Caro in biography.” —David M. Shribman,
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
 
“Epic . . . A searing account of ambition derailed by personal demons . . . a triumphant drama of ‘political genius in action’ . . . Caro combines the skills of a historian, an investigative reporter and a novelist in this searching study of the transformative effect of power.” —Wendy Smith,
Los Angeles Times

“An addictive read, written in glorious prose that suggests the world’s most diligent beat reporter channeling William Faulkner.
Passage is an essential document of a turning point in American history. It’s also an incisive portrait of one great, terrible, fascinating man suddenly given the chance to reinvent the country in his image.” —Darren Franich, Entertainment Weekly

About the Author

For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, ROBERT A. CARO has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, has three times won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and 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.” In 2010 President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal, stating at the time: “I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized, and I’m sure it helped to shape how I think about politics.” In 2016 he received the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. The London Sunday Times has said that Caro is “The greatest political biographer of our times.”  
 
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

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0375713255
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (May 7, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 768 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780375713255
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375713255
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.07 x 1.58 x 9.17 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,476 ratings

About the author

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Robert A. Caro
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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.

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4.7 out of 5 stars
2,476 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book well-researched and engaging. They describe it as a great, engrossing read that is rewarding. Readers appreciate the political legacy and history of Lyndon Johnson's domestic legislative achievements. The biography is described as riveting, first-rate, and the pinnacle of biographical writing. Customers find the character study fascinating and lively.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

424 customers mention "Writing quality"375 positive49 negative

Customers appreciate the book's writing quality. They find it well-researched and detailed, with an abundance of source material. The author is described as a masterful storyteller who provides a clearer understanding of events and people.

"...Thousands of documents were studied as Caro once again lives in Washington DC for weeks and months at a time trying to get inside the head of his..." Read more

"...Quotations from a wide variety of observers, friends of one, enemies of the other, co-workers and acquaintances of both, add quite a bit of color...." Read more

"...But these negative concerns are minor. Caro's research and powerful writing style allow him to bring to life a man and the nature of political..." Read more

"...extremely uneven work: where it is good, it is great, and wonderfully well-documented; but where it is not good, it sometimes descends to bad history..." Read more

343 customers mention "Readability"329 positive14 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe it as a great series and a worthwhile read. The story of Lyndon Johnson's time in office is told like a detective novel, making the pages fly by. Readers praise it as an excellent and essential tale of the 20th century.

"...Absolutely competent, understanding power, and desperately ambitious, Johnson would relegate himself to the job that former Vice President John..." Read more

"...He's produced a fine and fascinating book about a crucial moment in American history...." Read more

"...This volume is an extremely uneven work: where it is good, it is great, and wonderfully well-documented; but where it is not good, it sometimes..." Read more

"...the final volume will be as absorbing, penetrating, and extraordinary as the first four of Caro's story of Lyndon Johnson." Read more

147 customers mention "History value"147 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's historical value. They find it insightful into LBJ's political legacy and his domestic legislative achievements. The book brings history to life with compelling details, making it seem as though the author is an experienced political biographer. Readers also mention that the book provides insights into how LBJ quickly gained power and became the leader of the Senate.

"...Absolutely competent, understanding power, and desperately ambitious, Johnson would relegate himself to the job that former Vice President John..." Read more

"...style allow him to bring to life a man and the nature of political power in compelling terms and in all their complexity. This is a masterpiece." Read more

"...Caro at his best is a great political biographer/historian. However, the book has some negative aspects...." Read more

"...towards increasing responsibility, and his use of power as the Senate Majority Leader, a Congressional leader like few others in the nation's history..." Read more

75 customers mention "Biography quality"75 positive0 negative

Customers praise the biography for its quality. They find it an engaging account of Lyndon B. Johnson's life, with insightful details about his origins, sources of wealth, and political power. Readers describe the book as the definitive work on Lyndon B.J., with a bibliography of books cited in notes and an index.

"...Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson is once again a first rate biography of a President that had tremendous impact on our country, our history, and..." Read more

"...Despite his brillance as an historian, no self-respecting editor or publisher should have permitted that kind of self-indulgence...." Read more

"Caro's series on Johnson is the best biography I've ever read because Caro knows his man, captures him in all his complexity, and uses his subject..." Read more

"...a bibliography of Books Cited in Notes, Notes, an Index (linked back to the main text),..." Read more

62 customers mention "Interest"62 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They appreciate the meticulous storytelling that creates an immediate sense of urgency in those fateful days. The material holds their attention throughout, even though it's complex and enigmatic at times.

"...It is both intense and unrelenting...." Read more

"...Many of the examples cited are both fascinating and enlightening...." Read more

"...He makes his tale interesting, exciting. Caro at his best is a great political biographer/historian...." Read more

"...It covers the shortest, but also the most interesting, period of time of any of the books yet...." Read more

32 customers mention "Character study"32 positive0 negative

Customers find the character study fascinating with vivid details and lively characters. They appreciate the author's portrayal of Lyndon Johnson's character, both his good and bad sides. The interplay between personalities and politics is portrayed in compelling terms. The book provides a balanced look at the talents and weaknesses of Lyndon Johnson.

"...The Johnson/RFK feud is portrayed in compelling terms. I've listened to some tapes of their conversations, and they are civil enough...." Read more

"...readers that LBJ was one of the most complex, intriguing and fascinating characters in the history of American politics." Read more

"...of his Lyndon Johnson biography, Robert Caro has written a compelling character study of LBJ's emergence as an ignored understudy to a highly..." Read more

"...to win the South for the nominee, JFK, but the whole cast of characters is thoroughly analyzed...." Read more

31 customers mention "Enlightenedness"31 positive0 negative

Customers find the book enlightening and helpful for understanding LBJ's mindset and way of acting during the time. They say it makes people and time come alive, inspiring, infuriating, and teaching them all at the same time. The author paints a convincing psychological portrait of this larger-than-life figure. They appreciate the detailed research and interviews that create a moving and convincing portrait of one. The book teaches the workings of the government.

"...Many of the examples cited are both fascinating and enlightening...." Read more

"...he is able first to talk about lbj, sympathetically, mostly; then to turn around and do the same for bobby kennedy, and explain why they loathed..." Read more

"...It is about incredible motivation and skill of one of the major figures of American political history in pushing through civil rights' protections..." Read more

"...Caro does a wonderful job of transitioning our emotions as we follow Johnson before and after the Kennedy administration...." Read more

30 customers mention "Length"10 positive20 negative

Customers have different views on the book's length. Some find it interesting and readable despite its size and scope. Others feel it's too long and boring, with run-on sentences and too many pages. However, some consider it worth exploring.

"...There are too many pages of this stuff; and a large part of it is repetitive...." Read more

"..."Passage Of Power" is surprisingly readable despite its heftiness in size and scope, and thus very much a continuation of the high bar set by "LBJ..." Read more

"...It covers the shortest, but also the most interesting, period of time of any of the books yet...." Read more

"...It’s a real problem, with many sentences running on so long that I’d forgotten the lead-in subject altogether...." Read more

A completely engrossing account of LBJ's transition from Senate Majority ...
5 out of 5 stars
A completely engrossing account of LBJ's transition from Senate Majority ...
A completely engrossing account of LBJ's transition from Senate Majority leader,his relationship with the Kennedy's told on a moment by moment narrative that makes it a true living history which paints a convincing psychological portrait of this larger than life figure, and at the same time shows how different history may have been completely different but for a few key decisions and moments, while at the same time ironically portraying the sense of destiny and inevitability of what actually unfolded as dictated by the character of the key actors. Must read.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2012
    For those of us who have read the previous volumes of Robert Caro's portrait of the life of Lyndon Johnson, we have all eagerly awaited this the latest installment. When the author first began writing what has become the definitive biography of the 36th President, he was basically vilified by scholars as getting it wrong. With each passing year, and volume, historians have come over to Caro's side of the story in troves. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power can either be read as part of the anthology or as a standalone story of Johnson's years during the Vice Presidency, and his ascension to the oval office upon the tragic death of John Kennedy.

    Either way, you are in for a real treat. Many readers agree that writing doesn't get any better than this, and the proof is that Caro's writings have stood the test of time, and his reputation has simply gotten bigger. This is 605 pages (736 with footnotes) of detailed writing that any student of that period will cherish. The first half of the book, over 300 pages is dedicated to the last two Senate years, and the Vice Presidential years when LBJ lived the most down in the valley depressing type experience. He was ignored by the President, and castigated by young Robert Kennedy. Between the two of them Johnson's power had been castrated, and he was boxed into a small office. In a city where power was everything, Johnson now had none.

    This is especially interesting in light of the heights from which he the former Senate Majority leader had fallen. Johnson as leader was considered the most powerful man in the Congress, with the White House held by the popular Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Ike could get nothing done in the Democratic Congress without LBJ's help. Now with a potential Democratic President coming into office, he Johnson would be virtually unimportant as the new President would grasp power from both Ike, and Johnson. LBJ therefore knew that the Vice Presidency was where he wanted to be, or so he thought at the time.

    As the book so poignantly points out however, Johnson also knew that seven other men had become president by simply being Vice President, and that is why he wanted the job so badly. Absolutely competent, understanding power, and desperately ambitious, Johnson would relegate himself to the job that former Vice President John Nance Gardner had described as not worth a bucket of warm spit.

    For the first 300 thoroughly documented pages we feel Lyndon Johnson's pain as Vice President. It is both intense and unrelenting. The author has interviewed scores of the President's contemporaries who poured themselves into the story in order that Caro could get it right. Thousands of documents were studied as Caro once again lives in Washington DC for weeks and months at a time trying to get inside the head of his subject, moving down the same corridors that Johnson himself walked. As in previous volumes, the reader can just sense that the author has penetrated to the heart and soul of this most interesting of Presidents, and one who still remains bigger than life.

    More than 60 pages of the book are devoted to the day John Kennedy dies, and then LBJ's successful attempt to reframe the nation's collective pain and use it to galvanize the Congress in coming months to pass his predecessor's agenda, something the late President was not able to get done himself. Caro and Kennedy Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. go head to head in the narrative as Caro rips to shreds Schlesinger's previously accepted belief that JFK would have passed his own agenda had he lived.

    The book also deals with the hotly debated topic of whether JFK expected LBJ to accept the Vice Presidency when the offer was made. The story of Bobby Kennedy attempting to talk his brother out of it, and even telling Johnson he should withdraw his name is covered in detail. Interviews were conducted, documents studied and tape recordings of Lyndon Johnson's discussion of the matter are all covered in detail. Once again, Caro has rewritten conventional wisdom.

    Readers on both sides of the discussion as to who killed JFK will be sorely disappointed if they expect Caro to shed new light on this hotly contested topic which still remains red hot some 50 years after the assassination. The author is of the opinion that the Warren Commission got it right, and he spares no attempt in his praise of the commission and its conclusions.

    CONCLUSION

    This latest installment of Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson is once again a first rate biography of a President that had tremendous impact on our country, our history, and what we have become. It covers a short period in the President's life, his ascension to the Vice Presidency and his coming into the Presidency itself. Basically nothing of the wrenching Viet Nam experience is covered. That will probably be left to the next installment. In the meantime we have enough to chew on in this volume to keep any fan of Caro's going until years from now, the author may shed new light on the American experience in Viet Nam. This reader urges all readers of politics, history, and fascinating biography to pick up a copy of this book and read it cover to cover.

    Richard Stoyeck
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  • Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2012
    This review was originally written for my blog: [...]

    ROBERT CARO'S "THE PASSAGE OF POWER"

    Numerous reviewers have already had their say on Robert A. Caro's book about Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the presidency by way of his controversial choice as John F. Kennedy's running mate in 1960 and JFK's assassination in November 1963.

    I don't intend to add to that number. I plan to confine myself to a few points which, I believe, deserve greater attention than they've gotten. Most of my comments concern (a) Caro's interpretation of the immediate consequences of LBJ's elevation to the Presidency or (b) the book's several revelations, which I found fascinating. A couple comments at the end will address Mr. Caro's writing style which I consider to be very good in some places and -- frankly -- abominable in others.

    My first point is that Caro is entirely right in arguing that the Kennedy tax bill and the civil rights legislation JFK sponsored would never have passed in 1964 if Lyndon Johnson had not become President. No doubt the legislation got an immense, though tragic, boost from JFK's assassination and the memorial ceremonies that followed. Most Americans watched the killing happen again and again in their own living rooms and spent hours in front of their television sets following the solemn events that accompanied the display of his coffin and his eventual burial.

    I believe Caro is quite correct in describing the emotional impact of those few days in November as the most powerful in history. If you were an adult then, as I was, a surprising number images leap to mind unbidden, even though you might have been engulfed in an emotional fog as most of us were.

    However, whatever the claims of Kennedy advocates, the facts are undeniable. Johnson grasped the essentials of the legislative process far better than JFK or anyone on his team. More important, LBJ knew better than any man living or dead how to use power in a legislative context and how to move members to do his bidding, not always willingly. He foresaw the strategies that would be employed on the civil rights (and tax) bills by the immensely powerful members of the Southern contingent on both sides of the Capitol, and he frustrated those strategies at every step of the way.

    I worked in the Senate for a time while LBJ was Majority Leader. I knew many of his people and I'd watched him operate from a reasonably good position. Although I was no longer in government in 1964, my work required me to be very attentive to what was happening at the White House and on Capital Hill. I had very good sources, colleagues who knew at least as much as I did. And I cared for personal as well as professional reaons.

    Without taking anything away from John F. Kennedy, whom I worked for in 1960 and enthusiastically supported, no one but Lyndon Johnson could have done what Johnson did in 1964. And that he accomplished it without the help of Sam Rayburn, who had passed away, verges on the miraculous.

    Kennedy was surrounded by some very smart people while he was in Senate and by a lot more of them once he became President. But JFK hadn't been an especially attentive legislator. His understanding of Congressional politics was among the least of his skills, and the very ablest of his legislative lieutenants did not know collectively
    what Lyndon Johnson grasped intuitively and understood in detail at a single glance. Unwisely, though for reasons that Caro explains in depth, the Kennedy Administration made no use of Johnson's legislative talents, rarely asked his advice and almost never listened.

    Once Johnson took over as President, he effectively deployed some of Kennedy's legislative aides but it was LBJ who determined the strategy and, in a number of cases,
    it was Johnson who did the work that mattered most. Anyone who believes that what
    happened in 1964 would have happened any way might as well confess openly that he
    or she knows nothing about Congress.

    Second, Caro establishes, far better than I understood at the time, that Lyndon Johnson was ruthless, corrupt and willing to cross just about any moral, ethical or legal line to achieve what he wanted.

    Lyndon Johnson gained a lot of approbation for putting his financial assets in "a blind trust" when he became Vice President. But who knew that Johnson installed secret telephones, not connected through the White House switchboard, over which he talked regularly to his chosen trustees, often late at night or early in the morning, to tell them exactly what he wanted done? "Blind?" LBJ's trust didn't even bother with sun shades.

    Caro doesn't say how or if Johnson used inside knowledge to further his financial interests as President. But we certainly know from previous, authoritative accounts that the family fortune -- "Lady Bird's money" -- came because of favorable rulings on her television interests that were extracted, a better word might be "coerced," from the Federal Communications Commission. At the time, the FCC exerted virtually absolute control over commercial television and the broadcast spectrum. The family's money came gross abuse of power. Caro doesn't say -- perhaps no one can -- if Lyndon Johnson misused his power as President for personal enrichment. But what he did was scandalous and would have produced an enormous public outcry if known at the time.

    Caro also tells his readers at considerable length how Johnson bribed -- there is no other word for it -- the owners of the Houston Chronicle into promising him support throughout his term of office by extracting a written promise from the Chronicle's owner in exchange for approving the merger of two major Houston banks. The "public interest'' in approving or denying the merger wasn't carefully weighed. In the end, it wasn't even considered. Johnson demanded a letter from the Chronicle promising unequivocal support, and he got what he wanted. While the letter carefully avoided naming the quo for which the quid was given, that was precisely the nature of the transaction. Having been paid what he demanded, Johnson blessed the merger. And that was that.

    No doubt, Lyndon Johnson was a great president before the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. But he was also deeply flawed and, I would contend, based on the evidence Caro has presented, a man of, shall we say, flexible moral character.

    Having made these points, let me move on to Caro's writing style. Despite the praise he has attracted, the Pulitzer prizes and the National Book Awards, Caro needs an editor as capable and ruthless as Max Perkins, who transformed the self-indulgent and incoherent prose of Thomas Wolfe into his masterpiece, Look Homeward, Angel.

    It's been reported that Caro is a ferocious defender of his own prose -- of every word, of every punctuation mark, of every stylistic vagary. But he is as self-indulgent as any hack writer in several respects. Most importantly, he packs warehouses of information and trainloads of verbiage into many sentences, filling them after the noun and verb with dependent clauses, colons and semi-colons, parenthetical interpolations, thoughts separated by dashes, digressions and assorted other grammatical paraphernalia before he gets around eventually to recording the predicate to complete the beginning element of the sentence. Not only is it often as difficult a line to follow as any ascent in the Himalayas, but I found several occasions on which I believe the grammar was simply incorrect. The end of the sentence did not agree grammatically with the beginning. Unlike Colonel Nicholson, Robert Caro does not require outside intervention to blow up the grammatical equivalent of the Bridge Over the River Kwai. He proves quite capable of doing so himself.

    Caro's hubris in dealing with editors is unjustified, and I'm astounded that critics have supinely accepted as "brilliant" a style which is unnecessarily complicated and, at times, self-defeating. I'm not asking Caro to write like Ernest Hemingway. But if I remember my Thomas Macaulay and Edward Gibbon, both of them managed to write long, complicated sentences, packed with information, without losing track of how they'd begun a sentence before coming to the end. More important, while readers of Macaulay or Gibbon might have needed to pay close attention to absorb the flow of the narrative styles, they were unlikely to become lost en route.

    In Caro's case, it's difficult at times to follow him without a GPS. Despite his brillance as an historian, no self-respecting editor or publisher should have permitted that kind of self-indulgence. Letting him pitch a few fits would have done his work a world of good.

    At the same time, It's necessary to say that when he lets the narrative flow, unimpeded by barriers inserted for no useful reason, Caro is capable of conveying the drama of
    events without gross artifice. The events surrounding the assassination, the actions that followed, the accumulation of emotions while the nation mourned are executed with a precision and mastery that any historian might admire.

    Caro has a second fault which is far less significant but which I occasionally found deeply annoying. The old saw about telling the reader what your going to tell him, then telling him, then telling him what you've told him sometimes achieves astronomical dimensions in Caro's writing. In some cases he seems to find it necessary to impart the same information, adding a morsel or two each time, quoting someone and then another someone and several more someones until he's pounded the point into the ground deep enough to have produced a gusher of oil.

    His initial chapter on the hatred between Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson is like that. In brief, the long, long chapter says that Bobby Kennedy detested Lyndon Johnson, and the feeling was reciprocated. Many of the examples cited are both fascinating and enlightening. Quotations from a wide variety of observers, friends of one, enemies of the other, co-workers and acquaintances of both, add quite a bit of color. But the essence is the same. Enough should be enough, and there comes a point when every writer ought to conclude that he or she has proved his or her point. Caro, however, seems unable to stop until he has used every bit of every interview he conducted and every scrap of research he or his wife collected from the many libraries they visited and the correspondence or diaries they read.

    I'd like to assure Mr. Caro that I got the point of his book that I persevered (sometimes reluctantly) through his endless sentences, entangled like the statue of Laocoon and his sons in the grasp of the serpents, and that I learned a great deal more about developments i thought I already understood pretty well, having lived through them.
    He's produced a fine and fascinating book about a crucial moment in American history.

    But I think Mr. Caro might finish his next, and presumably final volume, in The Years of Lyndon Johnson, much more quickly if he allowed a sympathetic editor to suggest a few modest improvements in his draft. It's not necessary to throw out the baby with the bathwater, Mr. Caro, but drowning the baby in too much bathwater is not a recommended procedure.

    Norman I. Gelman
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • IOS
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
    Reviewed in Canada on October 13, 2022
    It’s definitely a tome but really interesting. I read it with a lighter book off and on. It was very readable though.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente
    Reviewed in Spain on June 2, 2023
    Uma colecção gloriosa sobre Lyndon Johnson e a história dos EUA. Recomendo vivamente!
  • Renato B. P. Castro
    5.0 out of 5 stars Mais que uma biografia !
    Reviewed in Brazil on November 10, 2020
    Pode parecer um pouco específico demais para um leitor brasileiro, procurar a biografia de LBJ. Mas a abrangência com q R.Caro aborda aquela época tão efervescente nos leva a um verdadeiro mergulho no mundo dos anos 60, sem desfocar das (muitas) especificidades da política dos EUA e de seus protagonistas. Quantos livros, por exemplo, já lemos sobre o assassinato de JFK, mas revisitá-lo pelos olhos do Vice-Presidente, passageiro dois carros atrás nos dá outra perspectiva, notadamente ao detalhar o dilema em que ele se encontrava naquela manhã em Dalas, percebendo que o time do presidente já preparava sua substituição na chapa da reeleição......
  • gm
    5.0 out of 5 stars 2nd best out of the four books
    Reviewed in Germany on May 2, 2022
    Master of the Senate is the Best one of the four, but this is a close second. Just like all the other books by Caro, a must read. And it still feels like you're reading a fictional story.
  • Arvind S
    5.0 out of 5 stars Long detailed unvarnished and wonderful part II!
    Reviewed in India on January 8, 2016
    Like the preceding book, it is long and detailed and gives a clear picture of the brutal politics of Washington from the time when Lyndon Johnson stood for nomination as the Democratic party candidate for the presidency till the first few weeks after he actually became president (after JFK's assassination). Discusses the working and politics of the Kennedy white house (not necessarily complimentary), and the achievements of the first few weeks of the Johnson presidency.