The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 4)

This book - which is the fourth volume of a life of Lyndon B Johnson and which covers also his times but which can certainly be read quite independently of the earlier volumes (it summarises their findings where they are relevant) - completely gripped me from the first word through to around page 400 or so (when there is a rather long discussion of President Kennedy's funeral) and also for most of the rest of the book. It tells us first of all how Johnson failed to become the nominee of the Democratic party for 1960 (he wanted it, but but wanted it so much he could not bear to campaign for it and fail), then of years of torment as Vice President (albeit he took the role precisely because he knew he had better than a one in four chance of becoming President without having to fight a campaign), and finally of his brilliant handling of his 'to do' list after President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas in November 1963. The book covers other major figures - notably JKF and Bobby Kennedy - not in as much detail as Johnson, but it brings them very fully alive. (Also for example Harry Byrd, a senator in his 70s who left school at 15 to take over his family's failing newspaper business...)Caro really understands human beings; and he really understands political life. His research has clearly been painstaking and so thorough that you cannot believe he has got anything wrong here. The people come alive in their strengths and weaknesses alike. It made me feel both better and worse about Johnson, about JFK and about Bobby Kennedy - no mean feat. And the narrative is compelling and very rarely slackens pace. (Johnson's different approaches to two difficult people he wishes to serve on the Warren Committee is a small but amazing account of what made him tick and made him brilliant - one he bounces, through a public announcement, the other he persuades in a short 22 minute meeting, having figured out completely compelling 'lines to take' in both cases....)While it's very bad news that the final volume won't appear for another 10 years or so, on current trends (if Caro lives to write it) - and it will cover Vietnam (where Johnson seems to have adopted his one and only way with a difficulty, namely leaning into it with more and more force until he triumphs) - the consolation is that there are, at least, three earlier volumes to catch up on and for me to look forward to.I cannot recommend this too strongly.

It's not often I wish I could give a book more than 5 stars. This is a superbly written, nuanced account of 5 crucial years in the life of Lyndon Johnson and, indeed, in the life of the United States, some of them better known as the Kennedy years. Caro gives us political biography as political thriller - there were times when, as with Mantel's Wolf Hall, although I knew what was going to happen, it felt as though I didn't. And Caro is so very, very good at psychological analysis - I was going to say we get a warts and all portrayal, but Caro actually goes beyond even that to show Lyndon Johnson in all his human complexity. It is difficult to believe that a book about this so over-told period in American history, with so much detailed information on political manoeuvring, a 600+ page book on such a short period, could be so engrossing, so absorbing that when you look up from it, you have to reorientate yourself. I lived through the LBJ years and brought away the memory of an apparently overbearing bully and the relentless chants `hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today' during Vietnam - now I am aware of a supremely astute and crafty political operator - someone who could actually deliver on the rhetoric, a poor boy who finally got his dream and endeavoured to create a country which was genuinely for the people, all the people. The overbearing bully is there, and none of Johnson's flaws are glossed over, but Caro, buttressed by years of painstaking and exhaustive research, shows us the man who was prepared to take on what he was told were lost causes, because, as he said `Well, what the hell's the presidency for?' And that is what this book is all about, as Caro says in the final paragraph of his introduction: `...the story of Lyndon Johnson during the opening, transition, weeks of his presidency is a triumphant story, one in which it is possible to glimpse the full possibilities of presidential power - of that power exercised by a master in the use of power - in a way that is visible at only a few times in American history.' The Kennedy men had the Harvard brains, but not the political nous. This is a book everyone should read, and it is uncomfortable reading because it makes us confront hows how ideals can almost certainly only be realised by a readiness to wheel and deal, a willingness perhaps to let principles slide, the necessity of working within moral grey areas - it should be gift-wrapped and presented to every new leader of men wherever they may be.