Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III

Caro's work is amazing - again. Just as with the first two volumes of the life of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate is a page turning epic, this time focusing on the United States Senate in the 1950s. Caro's description of Johnson's meteoric rise demonstrates the subject's brilliance in, first the attainment, and then the use, of power. One also comes away with the the unavoidable impression that this use of power was, primarily, for personal purposes.Johnson is not a likeable character in any of the author's three volumes. Liar, cheater, overly sensitive, obsessed, cold, unfeeling, mean-spirited (read how he treats Lady Bird), all of these descriptions are appropriate. You might think that Caro does not like his subject and is tainted in his analysis. However, when you consider the amount of work and research that went into this offering, as well as the other volumes, it is hard to challenge the author's motivation or analysis. The three volumes taken together, to my mind, constitute the most thoroughly researched work on any political figure in American political history. Do not be put off by the massiveness of the work. Unless you have a pretty open schedule it will take you sometime to get through the more than one thousand pages, but it is thoroughly enjoyable from cover to cover. The writing is as good as the research. And it is not just Johnson. Caro's mini-biography of Senator Russell of Georgia, which continues throughout the pages, is brilliant. His history of the Senate and its great figures, including Clay, Calhoun and Webster, which puts Johnson's actions into context, might be the single best part of the book (don't skip over it).There is so much included in Master of the Senate, all of it worthwhile. I have not even mentioned the focus of the second half of the book featuring Johnson's efforts at passage of the Civil Rights Act. When you think of Johnson at the end of his career, bumbling his way through the Vietnam War disaster and sadly announcing his withdrawal from the 1968 Presidential race, you forget that he was one of the greatest politicians of the 20th Century. Not after you read this account. I can not recommend Master of the Senate enough.

Once again, Robert Caro hits a home run. The third volume of the LBJ biography is even better (to my mind, at least) than either volumes one or two. The first hundred pages is the best history of the United States Senate I have ever read. Caro's writing style is never ever boring. He turns a phrase as well as any fiction author, and captures the imposing presence of LBJ. For the reader it is as if we were actually on the Senate floor, being buttonholed by Johnson himself. LBJ alternately cajoled, threatened, flattered, fawned and browbeat his colleagues as he consolidated power in himself as no one ever had before him.The story of this volume is Johnson's transformation from a typical Southern Senator, with all the baggage that entails, to the man who masterminded the passage of the first Civil Rights law in one hundred years. There is no question that the Act as passed was tepid, and the jury trial guarantee which was included in order to get the Southern Senators to acquiesce to its passage was enough to ensure that perpetrators of rights violation could do so without fear of conviction. Nonetheless, if only for its symbolic significance, Caro makes clear that this did offer hope to a segment of the population sorely in need of even that symbolic victory. There is ample evidence presented for those who believe that Johnson went through this effort and transformation because of his driving ambition to be President. His most brilliant work since the Robert Moses bio. No doubt this volume will join that opus as one of the most important biographies of our time.

Robert Caro's latest volume on the career of Lyndon Johnson is a fascinating warts and all study of the uses of parliamentary power. Even though this is meant to be a picture of the Senate in the 1950s, I would imagine anyone wishing to understand the workings of this institution will find this book useful. This is due to the subject of Caro's efforts, who undeerstand the workings of the senate better than probably anyone in its history. This is a well-researched book, which along with Robert Dallek's two volumes, is likely to set the standard for LBJ biographies in the years to come. Caro has done his homework and the portraits of Johnson, as well as other members of the senate are intelligent and well-researched. Even though this book is about a president (this period will be covered in future books)it redresses an inbalance in the way Americans view their history, which is almost exclusively through the administrations of its presidents. Books which deal with the career of senators, representatives, or federal judges, are not published to a sufficiently wide-enough audience. As a consequence, the mainstream tends to view its achievements (and failings) as the responsibility of the executive, quite the opposite of how things actually work or how the founding fathers intend things to work. Hopefully this book, which has been justly successful, will lead to a restoration in balance in this area. Even though I gave this book a five star rating, I should alert any potential readers to a flaw that runs through all of the books that Caro has written. This is a seeming unwillingness to concede what a dirty business politics is. In all of the books, Caro makes comparisons with other people who encountered LBJ through the years and these comparisons reflect poorly on Johnson. The problem is that none of the people that are cited went on to become Majority leader (and a powerful one at that) or President. In discussing LBJ's views on matters such as race and what he was willing to do about this issue, a better comparison would be someone like FDR. Caro also should have consulted Kenneth Davis's books on FDR, particularly the one covering 1937-40 (even though they do not deal with the period in question-the bibliography includes books which do not deal with the 1950s-era Senate) Politics is the art of the possible after all. I think that perhaps the one thing that is missing and would make my praise unqualified is to put LBJ's actions in the context of others seeking to get ahead in politics. Some of the more extreme examples of LBJ's behavior might not seem so strange as a result.

Robert Caro has always been a brilliant writer, meticulous researcher, and "demystifier" par excellence. No complex process, policy, or political controversy has been beyond his ability to clearly and lucidly explain.But something even new and better happens in "Master of the Senate." Caro now becomes in every sense a brilliant historian. Because, more skillfully than he ever has before -- Caro places Johnson within the much larger context of the history of the US Senate and the ongoing theme of legislative vs. executive power. The riveting and fascinating anecdotes are there, believe me. The double-dealing, the womanizing, the red-baiting, the legislative genius. All there. But they are placed smack dab in the middle of a serious and subtle analysis of the history of legislative decision-making. Quite simply the best political biography I have ever read.

Readers who found themselves devouring David McCullough's superb biography of John Adams and Stephen Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage" may think it's a new phenomenon for works of history and biography to be as compellingly written as a novel by John Grisham or Stephen King. But Robert Caro set the standard years with his enormous biography of New York City mogul Robert Moses (which appeared in the early 1970s) and with the first volume of his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson (which appeared in 1982). Caro knows how to tell a story like no one else. Like its two predecessors, "Master of the Senate" will keep you up long after you know you should turn off the lights and go to sleep.This is not merely lively writing; it is meticulously researched political and social history, and it is the story of a man who was larger than life, in the full sense of that cliched term. During his lifetime, no one, even his closest colleagues and family members, could have known or understood half as much about Lyndon Johnson as Robert Caro has learned in his nearly thirty years of researching Johnson's life and times. Every colorful detail recounted by Caro fascinates, sometimes morbidly, for Johnson's many character defects tended to overshadow his real accomplishments and his place in 20th century American history. Caro does not stint on either character defects or accomplishments.I waited restlessly for ten years for this volume, wondering when -- and if -- it would appear, wondering whether Caro would have the health and strength to research and write it. His life of Johnson was originally to have been three volumes; now a fourth will be needed. One wonders whether Caro, who took more than 1100 pages in "Master of the Senate" to cover Johnson's 12-year career in the Senate, will be able to cover his vice-presidency, presidency, and post-presidency life in one final volume. After waiting ten years, I devoured "Master of the Senate in five days. It did not disappoint. I could not possibly recommend a book more enthusiastically.