Author: Robert Caro
tl;dr: The fourth volume of what is the goat of biographies.
This book is a bit of a let down just because there’s nothing on Vietnam and really only details the election of 1960 and Johnson’s maneuvers after he assumed the Presidency.
What’s incredible is that even though Lyndon was the hardest charging, tenacious politician we’ve perhaps ever seen, he missed the layup that was the Dem nomination in 1960. He dreamed of that moment his entire life and just froze.
Vietnam was obviously a mess, the Great Society’s results can be debated, but his stewardship of Civil Rights was nothing short of miraculous. Only he could, with his Southern bonafides and mastery of the Senate, pass civil rights. I shutter to think how much longer would we have gone without it had that man been in that moment.
I cannot wait for the final volume, which he’s been working on for the last 7 years and apparently he’s still not close!
Amazon: The Passage of Power
First published on May 23, 2020