Rating: 
Summary: Caro needs an editor.
Review: Having read and thoroughly enjoyed the previous 2 parts of Caro's LBJ biography, I eagerly awaited the publication of this book. However, this time I finally lost patience with Caro's prose. He is wordy, repetitive, and follows every tangent no matter how relevant. Don't get me wrong, much of the information is fascinating, but a good editor could have trimmed at least 200 pages and helped to create a much tighter book
Rating: 
Summary: Riveting and authoritative
Review: It's not every day that I take a 1000+ page hardback book on a plane trip. But since buying this book in February I have taken it on several trips because I literally could not bear to be parted from it. LBJ was a puzzling and inherently contradictory character, a man with compassionate instincts who was nonetheless in thrall to some of the most base and reactionary political interests of his time. This book lays out with exquisite detail and nuance the odyssey he traveled from his early days in Congress until his finest hours as Senate Majority Leader, culminating in the passage of the first civil rights act in more than 80 years. Like many baby boomers who came of age politically during the Vietnam era, my view of LBJ was incomplete at best. I am grateful to this book for the additional understanding I have gained from it, and I look forward to reading the two earlier volumes.
Rating:
Summary: A masterful performance
Review: Caro's epic study of Lyndon Johnson has reached the third of a scheduled four volumes, and it's another masterful performance. It takes one's breath away to realize Caro will spend forty years (if his final volume takes as long as this one) on a man who comes across as mostly despicable in the first two volumes. This volume includes plenty of disgraceful behavior, but author makes a good case that Johnson was a genius at politics and the greatest benefactor of Blacks of his century. The first two volumes cover his life before election to the senate in 1948, and they portray a dismal picture. He worked hard, loved his mother, and was a surprisingly good schoolteacher, but his intense ambition placed success above everything. If winning involved lying, breaking the law, or stabbing a friend in the back, he never hesitated. A Congressman since 1937, he used his office to enrich himself. Fraud won him the 1948 election to the senate (but his opponent's fraud defeated him in the election of 1941). And he was an unfaithful husband who treated his wife terribly. Entering the senate in 1949, he cultivated and won over Richard Russell, leader of southern Democrats and the most influential senator. To demonstrate his conservatism, he denounced civil rights legislation, joined enthusiastically in filibusters, and orchestrated a vicious attack on the head of the Federal Power Commission who had frustrated efforts of the oil industry to control prices. This upset many supporters who assumed (correctly) that he had been a New Dealer. Texas oil men harbored similar suspicions, but they quickly became Johnson enthusiasts. When the position of Majority Leader became vacant, he assumed it. This was easier than it sounds. Sophisticated readers may blink when Caro reminds them that, unlike the Speaker of the House, a Senate Majority Leader held an unimportant position with little power. No ambitious senator coveted it. Combining the few powers at his disposal with ferocious manipulative skills and chiarisma, he made the Majority Leader into the dominating post in the Senate (when he left, it reverted). It didn't hurt that his wealthy Texas backers produced an avalanche of money which Johnson distributed to the election campaigns of deserving colleagues Johnson first appears on page 109. Before this, Caro delivers a history of the Senate which, despite a glorious record, had been a moribund institution for almost a century. Except during major legislation, attendance was so sparse that routine business occurred at a glacial pace. Southern control of most committees meant reform died no matter what the national mood. After the shock of the depression during Roosevelt's first term, all FDR's liberal legislation failed. After assuming office, Truman announced his 'Fair Deal,' a program of civil rights and social reform. The Senate killed every bill. Truman campaigned in 1948 against a 'do nothing Congress.' Despite his great victory, no Fair Deal bill passed the Senate. It was 'the chief obstructive force in the federal government.' Johnson brought the Senate into the twentieth century. While opposed to a 'leader,' Senators had plenty of needs he could fulfill. Using his sole power over scheduling, he vastly improved the speed of legislating. He was the first leader who actually kept track of Senators, so he could summon them quickly when a quorum was required. A senator anxious to pass a minor bill that benefited his state alone could appeal to Johnson, and it was done. Despite his conservative reputation, he persuaded southern leaders to appoint talented liberals to important committees. He argued that this would unite Democrats to fend off Senate Republicans, now a majority after Eisenhower's election in 1952. In fact, his aim was to win respect from northern liberals. He enticed them by helping pass several bills they could not have achieved by themselves. Backing his presidential ambitions, conservative Southerners kept quiet. They would not keep quiet for a civil rights bill, but Johnson knew that without a gesture toward the Negro national party leaders would consider him a Southerner (and therefore unelectable). The culmination of his leadership was the voting rights act of 1957. Even at the time, supporters considered it a weak bill, and they were right. Yet its passage was a virtuoso performance and a milestone. Eighty years of southern control of the Senate meant certain death for attempts to help the Negro. Even the mildest anti-lynching law (dozens were introduced) was easily defeated. During previous attempts to pass civil rights laws, including one the previous year, liberals appealed to ideals of justice, democracy, decency, and the rule of law. This never worked. Johnson knew southern senators were unmoved by Negro poverty, oppression, and discriminatory laws, and they only mildly disapproved of lynching. However, Southerners worshipped the Constitution, portraying themselves as its defenders in opposing social legislation. Since the Constitution enshrined the right to vote, these senators agreed (theoretically) that it was a bad thing to deprive anyone of that right. Using this as a thin wedge Johnson persuaded them to forgo the usual filibuster, and the bill passed. Now the Attorney General could charge southern officials who refused to register Blacks. The trial would take place before a local judge and jury, so acquittal was guaranteed. Yet it laid the groundwork for the powerful laws of 1964 and 1965 which also couldn't have passed without the President's genius at arm-twisting. Speaking of genius, Master of the Senate runs to over a thousand pages, many devoted to the minutia of political maneuvering, yet it's hard to put down. Caro's Johnson displays plenty of the vicious traits that filled volumes 1 and 2, but the author's admiration is much more in evidence. What remains is a gripping biography of a man Caro maintains was an unparalleled virtuoso in the exercise of political power.
-0-
Rating:
Summary: The Democratic Nixon
Review: This is the third and largest (so far) volume in Caro's mammoth biography of Johnson, dealing with his Senate years. This, as Caro argues, was perhaps when Johnson was at the height of his powers: his talents for intimidating, charming and persuading were perfectly suited to the small scale and personal atmosphere of the Senate. Caro focuses in particular on the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which Johnson pushed through in a feat of legislative brilliance which short-circuited the opposition of both liberal and Southern Democrats, as well as the opportunistic Republican opposition.
Throughout the book, Caro continues his persuasive characterisation of Johnson as the Democratic Nixon: voraciously ambitious, oppressive to those beneath him, vicious towards those he perceived as his enemies, deliberately crude in his personal habits and utterly amoral in the pursuit of his goals. But the real fascination of Caro's Johnson is the contrast between this repulsive character and the charisma and compassion of which he was also capable. The portrait which ultimately emerges is a tragic one, of a man who seems to have been driven on by a fear of turning into his father, which spurred him on to seek personal and political success by any means possible.
Rating:
Summary: A long, but interesting read....
Review: LBJ is by far one of the most interesting president's in American history. Caro's book (not for someone with a short attention span) is so detailed and so well researched that the pages almost come to life as it describes his ascent to power within the House and then to the Senate. With over 1,000 pages of reading, I would have probably not taken it home from a bookstore, but I guess that is one of the problems with ordering on Amazon (i couldnt scope it out before i purchased it). It is definitely for the wonk and well educated political hack, this is no easy reading. It is no wonder that it takes him 10 years to produce each of his books, they are long and very well written. Two thumbs up!
Rating: 
Summary: if only every historian could write this well
Review: I raced through the more than 1000 pages of this fascinating story, and learned a lot about the Senate in the process. Caro is sometimes guilty of over-dramatization, for which I think he can be excused, since all the drama and color makes the book a lot more fun to read. He also demonizes Johnson frequently. (I thought he over-did this demonization in the previous volume about Johnson's election to the Senate.) But what ultimately redeems Johnson, and makes this book read like something of a triumph, is Johnson's contribution to civil rights. Caro properly places the struggle for civil rights in the center of this book, poignantly describing how black people were prevented from voting for a hundred years after the Fifteenth Amendment supposedly gave them the right to do so, and builds the book's story up to a climax with the passage of the first Civil Rights Act passed in the U.S. Senate in 1957. For all of Johnson's part in watering down this act, and other instances in which he stood with the Southern wing of the Democratic party, ultimately, Johnson got this bill passed. Obviously this fight, which Caro portrays as the first crack in the wall of Southern resistance to civil rights, foreshadows the larger ones that took place in 1963-65, when, again, Johnson was the man who ultimately got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. I look forward to reading the next volume, where, presumably, Johnson's large part in obtaining civil rights will at least to some degree, redeem him from the tragedy of Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: What goes on behind the scenes in the US Senate
Review: This book is written in a very dense style, kind of like those college textbooks you paid so much more. But this volume makes a very needed addition to political literature. It shows how the personal relationships between senators is the key to getting things done on Capitol Hill, an undercovered subject if there ever was one. Having worked in the US Senate what Caro talks about in the book actually happens. The constant hand holding, the constant need to know what is going on, and the constant feeding of senatorial ego. what you see on C-Span is only the tip of the iceberg, the real work that goes on is in private hideaway offices throughout the Capitol, in the Senators' dining room and in Senatorial offices. People who are not LBJ fans or political junkies will find it a hard read, this is not a book for the casual reader. This volume of the set really bring out LBJ at his best. Working on and with other senators, as senate majority leader.
Rating:
Summary: A Master of the Senate, An Overlooking of a Few Facts
Review: I am a longtime fan not only of presidential and senatorial history generally but of Robert A. Caro's take on said disciplines specifically. Thus it is with what Lyndon Johnson himself might have called a "heavy heart" that I am left mildly disappointed in the latest installment of Caro's multivolume epic on LBJ's life. For while Caro again renders a splendid narrative, some of the nitty-gritty details, it seems, were not gone over with a fine-tooth comb. In short, there are just too many demonstratively wrong statements for a book of such majesty. For example, Caro writes of a letter written by Sen. Burnet Rhett Maybank of South Carolina following the November 1954 election (hardback, p. 565). All fine and good, except for the fact that Maybank had died several months before. Other mistakes: a wrong first name (Clarence) for Rep. Charles C. Diggs Jr., who hailed from Detroit (not Chicago, as the book states -- see p. 704); an assertion that Sen. Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee vacated his seat in 1952 by death, not by his defeat in the Democratic primary at the hands of Albert Gore Sr. (p. 562) -- McKellar did not die till 1957; placing Johnson's D.C. home in the Kalorama neighborhood, some 3 miles south of its actual Forest Hills location; and Sen. Strom Thurmond assuming his seat on Jan. 3, 1957 (p. 866) -- Thurmond was actually a write-in winner for a six-year term in 1954, took his seat late that year, resigned in spring 1956 to uphold a commitment to voters, and won the same seat again that November, resuming his office shortly after that election. There are also a few simple arithmetic errors, such as miscalculating the number of electoral votes needed to secure election to the presidency in the 1950s (the figure was 266, not 264, as implied when Caro writes of the number of votes in addition to those in the Confederacy that would be requisite to win). Some of the mistakes are striking, some less so, but all give this reader an uneasy feeling about the overall quality of the fact checking; what did I miss that may also have been in error?
Rating:
Summary: LBJ: The Abominable Senator
Review: When I was the chair of my State Young Democrats, I wrote a letter to LBJ, praising him for his work on civil rights, fair housing, the Great Society, Medicare, the war on poverty. He had left office 5 years before. He was my hero. I had been a Democrat since I was 8 years old, supported Adlai Stevenson, JFK, Humphrey, and was a DNConvention delegate. I was thrilled when he wrote back from his ranch thanking me for the compliments and urging me to continue to work for the party. I felt then that he sincerely believed the Vietnam War was necessary, that he told the truth about it, and that it would be ended with peace talks, and I thought he regretted the biggest mistake of his life in committing American boys (my age) to fight, as it turned out, for nothing, though he never said so. But I felt the good he did outweighed the bad. I guess 60,0000 dead Americans might not agree. Or the contless people whose careers he destroyed, not to mention the long dark night into which he plunged our nation with his incessant dissembling. After reading Caro's tome of 1166 pages on LBJ's odious Senate career, I now have dumped that framed letter. He was, as far as I can tell from Caro's meticulous work, not much more than a crude, segregationist, big oil & business supporter, womanizer, who would lie cheat and steal to win an election and obtain power. His personal life was obscene. He destroyed decent men and women, he did nothing unless it advanced his career, he was a shirker in WWII, and he treated his staff, fellow Senators (unless they did him favors) and his own family, like dirt. He was cruel to those who had disabilities (e.g. a Senator with a drinking problem). Oh well, that's enough. Although Caro gives the most thorough future-presidential biography I have ever read, and a balanced one at that, backed by incredibly detailed sources and years of work, I do not for a minute believe he set out to destroy LBJ's reputation. LBJ did that himself. I don't know if I could stomach the next volume. But Caro is such a superb biographer, I may not be able to resist.
Rating:
Summary: Master of the Political Biography
Review: Having read Mr. Caro's two previous biographical volumes on LBJ, my anticipation about "Master of the Senate" was acute. And, true to form, Mr. Caro did not disappoint! This tome was one of the most informative and enlightening texts about the previously darkly secretive institution of the Senate and the way Mr. Johnson acceded to power and influence in this body. I particulary enjoyed Mr. Caro's detailed description of the Senate chambers and the historic figures who played out great National moments in their debates from the Senate Floor. I sat on the edge of my seat as Mr. Caro rivitingly described the last-minute cliff hanging maneuvers either used by Mr. Johnson or against him by the various factions and the unlikely alliances LBJ had to forge to get legislation passed. I must admit the LBJ of "Master of the Senate" sounded as ruthless as history has portrayed him, and when this volume is combined with the previous history of his boyhood in the Hill Country of Texas, and his tactics in winning his first election to the Senate, I understood the foundation for his intense personal obsession and drive. For a real primer on Senate history and an understanding of how it resonates down through to the current political landscape, I surely would recommend "Master of the Senate."
|
