Robert A. Caro's The Path to Power: Examining Lyndon Johnson's Final Years in Office

Webley Webster: An amazing feat of research and reporting. Don't be put off by the length; Johnson remains a compelling if deeply flawed subject throughout the long journey, which in this book takes you only through 1941 (there are three additional volumes with a fourth in the works). Lots of necessary digressions to contextualize Johnson's life in his family history, Texas history, US history, the lives of mentors and peers, and the social and cultural forces that shaped him. I typically shy away from giant books like this one (it's why I've never read The Power Broker, although I suspect I will now) but I'm glad I took a chance on this.

United States on Nov 20, 2023

Anand Ramchandani: Riveting, revealing and encapsulating. This 780 page book that follows LBJs life up to the age of 32 is probably one of the best books I've ever read....and dare I say ever written.

Painstakingly researched over 7 years, 3 of which Robert Caro (with his wife Ina) actually moved to the Hill Country where LBJ was born to ingratiate himself amongst its inhabitants.

We're taken on a whirlwind tour starting from LBJs ancestors, a fascinating explanation on how LBJ grew up in poverty using the grass in the Hill Country as a touchstone, what caused him to have this extreme ambition and his ruthless tactics at achieving his goals...and above all his political genius. We go from a life of poverty to the San Marcos Southwest Texas Teachers University, a brief stint at a Mexican Teaching school in Cottula, on to becoming probably the most effective Congressional Secretary in political history to becoming a Congressman of the 10th District through sheer grit and perseverance. His scheming opportunism gives way and oscillates back and forth from his sincere and innate liberal idealism

I beseech you to give this a try, you won't be sorry. If anything for the chapter called...

Singapore on Oct 30, 2023

Mat: This is a fantastic book, it is written beautifully - the story flows from page to page and the early chapters of life in the 19th Century Hill Country are utterly gripping. It is a page turner.

[What follows is my original review from July 2019, since amended below]

However, I am annoyed. The edition on sale here is the Pimlico edition, the paperback. Barely 37 pages in a whole section of book just fell apart and came away from the binding. Now pages jut out, get bent, torn when you put it down, slip out and fall away etc etc. I value my books, take care of them and often re-read them or refer to them for reference again and again. A pressing that disintegrates within the first chapter is not going to stand up to repeat readings. A book (indeed series) this masterful deserves a good binding, a proud place on everyone’s shelf and to be read again and again and again - but the edition is not up to scratch. Get a hardback edition, if possible.

[Original review ends]

EDIT 08/10/20: Since I wrote this review, there appears to have been a new paperback edition of all current volumes of Caro’s LBJ, by Bodley Head. I’ve since read book two in the Bodley...

United Kingdom on Jul 11, 2019

Elisa 20: This is a very good biography, with an amazing amount of research and detail integrated into the story of Lyndon Johnson up to his second run for the Senate in 1948. I particularly appreciated the description of the difficult, draining life for farmers in the Texas Hill Country. Of particular strength, for me, was the lengthy description of the hardships women (including Johnson's intellectual mother) faced in raising families and keeping the home without any running water or electricity. Beyond the lack of electric light, gas stoves, washing machines and dryers--conveniences that we all take so for granted now--even ironing clothes was arduous, not to mention lugging the gallons of water from the well to the house in order to take a weekly shower or wash clothing and dishes. Everyone living in America today should read those chapters because it is a great reminder that as overwhelmed as we can be by housework today, rural families in the years before Franklin Roosevelt had it much, much worse.

What impressed me most about this biography was Caro's ability to organize so much information, so much research and details about so many people into clear sentences, paragraphs and...

United States on Jul 25, 2015

Javier O'Neill: Lyndon B Johnson's Presidency is often overlooked,since he has the distinction of being the President that followed Kennedy's Camelot and preceded Nixon's Watergate. But none the less,his rise to power is no less fascinating the two Presidents who came before and after LBJ.

Robert Caro sets the stage,to tell the story of a politician whose ruthlessly brutal and pragmatic ambition,took him to great heights at early age,but earned him the scorn,hatred and distrust from his peers. The first part of this epic biography starts out in the barren,poverty stricken Hill Country,in Texas. The author paints a vivid picture of the hard life the Johnson family had,living in a part of the United States which was 20 years behind the rest of the country. Raised on a bleak,isolated Texas Farm, Lyndon B John,wanted nothing more then to break of this poverty and make something of himself. His father's former position as a Texas State Legislator,inspired his entrance into politics, but ultimately his father's failures drove him relentlessly,towards success,to avoid the poor,back breaking life,he experienced at an early age.

To reach the great heights he desired to reach,LBJ lied,cheated...

United Kingdom on Feb 18, 2015

Mr. P. A. Gower: This is the first book in Robert Caro's Magnus Opus 4 volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson. A weighty tome of 768 pages it covers Lyndon Johnson's early life, upbringing in the improvised backwoods of Texas, education at a lowly teachers training college, his work as a secretary to a congressman, then becoming a congressman himself before his first and unsuccessful attempt to get elected to the senate.

As a Brit, my knowledge of Johnson was limited to knowing that he was the President who replaced Kennedy and he actually introduced civil rights and the great society but got bogged down in the Vietnam War, which in part he inherited. From the outside it seemed as if history had dealt this Texan a raw deal. In Caro's book, however, Johnson appears to be a deeply complex and possible flawed character and I am reminded of the famous line on power from Plato's work: The Republic ‎"Those who seek power are not worthy of that power." Caro provides much material of his early life to encourage the reader to play amateur psychologist in wondering whether Johnson's single minded pursuit for power was possibly an attempt to control his environment having suffered through his...

United Kingdom on Mar 20, 2013

William Jordan: This book starts with some of Lyndon Johnson's ancestors (Johnsons - impractical dreamers; Buntons - tempered dreams with doing what's necessary to succeed in life); moves into a discussion of the Hill Country (fascinating vignette of depleting natural resources); then onto Johnson's family and his early life (always needed to be the centre of attention; if he couldn't lead, he wouldn't play); his relationship with his parents (especially his father whom he idolised when his father was doing very well in life and with whom he fought tooth and nail when he failed in business); his leaving home a couple of times; life at college (he was unpopular but found a way to power for the first time); in politics (on the staff of a local Congressman; and his political campaigns).

The picture that emerges is rich, complex and detailed. Johnson got things done - he brought electricity to the Texas Hill Country (against the odds - people named their children after him - he had transformed their lives); and he seems through a later invention to have pretty much turned the 1940 Congressional elections in favour of the Democrats. But there's always a dark side - he has no clearly discernible...

United Kingdom on Feb 16, 2013

Mike Powers: I recently completed "The Path to Power," the first volume of Robert A. Caro's multi-volume biography about Lyndon Baines Johnson, the thirty-sixth President of the United States. Here is a magnificently written, highly detailed, and ultimately scathing portrait of the early life of the man who brought us the "Great Society," the "War on Poverty," and the Civil Rights Act of 1964... as well as the "Credibility Gap" and the War in Vietnam.

Robert A. Caro's majestic Johnsonian triptych "The Years of Lyndon Johnson." is currently made up of "The Path to Power," which covers LBJ's life from his birth in 1908 until his first run for the U.S. Senate in 1941; "Means of Ascent," a chronicle of Johnson's years from 1941 to his second (and ultimately successful) Senate run in 1948; and "Master of the Senate," the critically acclaimed narrative of LBJ's 12-year career in the Senate (1948-1960). These three volumes are among the most critically acclaimed and highly honored biographies of all time. They've won three National Book Awards (one for each volume); a Francis Parkman Prize for best work of history (Volume 3); and a Pulitzer Prize for biography (also Volume 3.)

As I've...

United States on Oct 26, 2004