Describe Books Concering The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)
| Original Title: | The Path to Power |
| ISBN: | 0679729453 (ISBN13: 9780679729457) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1 |
| Characters: | Sam Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, Sam Rayburn, Charles Marsh, Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Setting: | Johnson City, Texas(United States) Washington, D.C.(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction (1982), National Book Award Finalist for Autobiography/Biography (Hardcover) (1983) |
Robert A. Caro
Paperback | Pages: 882 pages Rating: 4.44 | 16011 Users | 895 Reviews
Relation During Books The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)
The Years of Lyndon Johnson is the political biography of our time. No president—no era of American politics—has been so intensively and sharply examined at a time when so many prime witnesses to hitherto untold or misinterpreted facets of a life, a career, and a period of history could still be persuaded to speak.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” Rayburn (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.
Identify Appertaining To Books The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)
| Title | : | The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1) |
| Author | : | Robert A. Caro |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 882 pages |
| Published | : | February 17th 1990 by Vintage (first published November 21st 1982) |
| Categories | : | Biography. History. Nonfiction. Politics. North American Hi.... American History. Presidents |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)
Ratings: 4.44 From 16011 Users | 895 ReviewsNotice Appertaining To Books The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)
This is a sensational opening to the LBJ biography series. I was blown away by the detail that Caro includes and the stories that he is able to weave, shedding both positive and negative lights on LBJ. It appears that no stone was left unturned and no person opinion was swept under the rug. Caro does a great job in this, the first of four massive volumes.Caro uses a technique with which I am usually highly critical; that of tangential writing. He steers away from the story to tell a tale aboutTook me a month to read this but it was well worth the effort. At times, I thought of skipping to the last book (so far) in the series which covers when Johnson became president, but I never felt like giving up this one despite its size and how detailed it is. By the end, I was hooked and well up for reading the whole series. Think what makes it great is that it isn't just about Lyndon Johnson but like it says in the title, about "the years of Lyndon Johnson" - it's really a history book about
After years of putting it off, I finally dove into Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson series. Man, this guy can write. He has an historian's eye for detail, a reporter's gift for immediacy, a novelist's skill at characterization, context and narrative; the sort of absorptive historical writing that went out with Gibbon or, at least, Shelby Foote. Despite the often-doorstop lengths of his books, they are never dull. He makes 99 percent of other historians seem pedestrian and
For years I've shoved Caro's The Power Broker into people's hands like I got commission for it, like I was some kind of cheap pusher ("Just try it..."). It's the greatest nonfiction book I've ever read, hands down, bar none, no question. But the only other thing Caro ever wrote was this four volume (fourth volume still forthcoming, and he'll probably manage to split it up and turn it into two more door-stopping volumes) biography of Lyndon Johnson, and I knew there was no way I cared enough
"...if Lyndon Johnson was not a reader of books, he was a reader of men--a reader with a rare ability to see into their souls."-- Robert A Caro, The Path to PowerI'll write more tomorrow, but if the next three (and the final, yet to be written book) are as polished and well-researched as this one, this may end up being the definitive biography of any president. I loved Morris' Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy. It and Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton were nearly tied in my affection and
Knowing Lyndon Baines Johnson understanding the character of the thirty-sixth President of the United States is essential to understanding the history of the United States in the twentieth century. During his Presidency, his Great Society, with its education acts and civil-rights acts and anti-poverty acts, brought to crest tides of social change that had begun flowing during the New Deal a quarter of a century before; after his Presidency, the currents of social change were to flow abruptly
So far in my quest to read a biography of each President who held office during my lifetime, I have covered Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. I have been mostly content with the biographers I chose but Robert A Caro tops them all. He even managed to keep me interested for at least 80% of the time. Reading presidential biographies feels a lot like being in school, except that most of the American history I studied in school was deeply slanted towards the sentiments that all of our Presidents were
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