The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage Of Power – Robert A. Caro, 2012 ★★★★

Free at Last

It is amazing how each of Robert Caro’s four (so far) books on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson manages to create its own distinct identity, interlinked to the others yet separate.

In The Passage Of Power, LBJ’s story finally moves to the White House, where he is trapped for years as forlorn vice president playing stooge to the man who beat him for the Democrat nomination in 1960, only to win the office he craved for so long as the result of an assassin’s bullet and then do things with that office that would amaze detractors and allies alike.

Passage isn’t perfect, but it’s a fascinating, detailed account of and about flawed greatness.

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: Master Of The Senate – Robert A. Caro, 2002 ★★★★

Breaking a Few Eggs

The more I read about Lyndon Johnson, the more I see how much one can do if heedless of needs for self-reflection, sleep, or a real friend.

Even as Robert A. Caro offers up some admiration for the man who would become the 37^th President of the United States, as Johnson aligns himself to causes Caro holds dear, the author does not try to sugarcoat the fact LBJ was first and last a deeply-unpleasant SOB.

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: Means Of Ascent – Robert A. Caro, 1990 ★★★½

Snatching the Middle Rung

Means Of Ascent begins as a high-spirited adventure tale of a risk-taking politician gutting through a deadly illness and campaigning from an early-model helicopter. It ends as a whodunit, complete with menacing gunmen and courtroom misdirection ploys.

What connects the two parts is Lyndon Johnson, an 11-year member of the U. S. House of Representatives desperate to be where the action is in American politics – the Senate – and willing to do anything to get there.

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power – Robert A. Caro, 1982 ★★★★★

Seeming a Saint While Playing the Devil

When it comes to DNA analysis, Robert A. Caro was way ahead of the field in 1982 when he identified a specific human genome for ruthlessness and dubbed it “the Bunton strain.”

A line of legendarily cold and selfish Texans, the Bunton family left a mark on their lineal descendent Lyndon Baines Johnson. Along with the unforgivingly harsh environment of the Lone Star State’s Hill Country, the Bunton strain formed LBJ in Caro’s telling to become one of the nastiest SOBs ever to win his nation’s highest office.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses And The Fall Of New York – Robert A. Caro, 1974 ★★★

Building a Monster

Like platinum, efficiency in government is highly prized but hard to find. Yet it can be overvalued, too; think of Mussolini making the trains run on time. If you think a fascist analogy is out-of-place in reviewing a biography of a parks commissioner, you probably haven’t read Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker.