Rating: 
Summary: Caro Does It Again
Review: The second volume in Caro's "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" only covers a few short years and most of the book deals with his run for the senate against Coke Stevenson. Stevenson comes across as a very admirable figure who worked his way to the top. Some historians disagree with the picture that Caro paints, most notably Robert Dallek. However Johnson does not come off as a particularly bad guy. To understand him you really have to look deep through all the bluster. I'll admit that Johnson was not the person anyone would hold up as a hero, he's very flawed, but there is something about the man that makes you feel that deep down he intendeds to be good. "Means of Ascent" is another homerun for Caro!!!
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous book
Review: This is a fabulous book which continues the story of LBJ. The first volume is a great story. This second volume continues the great story telling based on a flood of facts that makes you wonder how Caro manages to amass so much information and use it in a way that reads like good fiction. But don't start here. Read the first volume, and you'll be sure to read on through this one.
Rating:
Summary: Faulty thriller
Review: Volume 2 of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson takes the reader through the 1940s, from Johnson's (brief) wartime service to the Texas Senatorial Election in 1948.In fact most of the book is devoted to that 1948 election - Johnson was running against the seemingly unassailable Coke Stevenson for the Democratic Party candidacy. Caro describes the campaign in great detail, and I found it fascinating stuff. The main strength of the book is Caro's gift for telling history in an interesting way - this book reads almost like a gripping political thriller. I had reservations about the balance of Caro's analysis in the first Volume of this work, and I suppose there are similar problems with Volume 2 - there is absolutely no doubt that Caro sees Johnson as the villain of the piece, with Coke Stevenson the hero. Things are rarely as black and white as this, especially in politics, and I doubt that Johnson .... a previously pristine state electoral system. In the introduction to this volume, Caro blames Johnson openly for bringing the Presidency into disrepute - but what does that really mean, is that an idealised view of the past, what about the distinctly shady Presidential race in 1876, for example? More contextual objectivity is needed. Yet, even with these faults, this was a superb read.
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