PDF Ebook Master Of The Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro
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The most riveting political biography of our time, Robert A. Caro’s life of Lyndon B. Johnson, continues. Master of the Senate takes Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 through 1960, in the United States Senate. Once the most august and revered body in politics, by the time Johnson arrived the Senate had become a parody of itself and an obstacle that for decades had blocked desperately needed liberal legislation. Caro shows how Johnson’s brilliance, charm, and ruthlessness enabled him to become the youngest and most powerful Majority Leader in history and how he used his incomparable legislative genius--seducing both Northern liberals and Southern conservatives--to pass the first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction. Brilliantly weaving rich detail into a gripping narrative, Caro gives us both a galvanizing portrait of Johnson himself and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings of legislative power.
- Sales Rank: #44764 in Books
- Brand: Caro, Robert A.
- Published on: 2003-04-25
- Released on: 2003-04-25
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.16" h x 1.69" w x 6.06" l, 3.15 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 1232 pages
Amazon.com Review
Robert Caro's Master of the Senate examines in meticulous detail Lyndon Johnson's career in that body, from his arrival in 1950 (after 12 years in the House of Representatives) until his election as JFK's vice president in 1960. This, the third in a projected four-volume series, studies not only the pragmatic, ruthless, ambitious Johnson, who wielded influence with both consummate skill and "raw, elemental brutality," but also the Senate itself, which Caro describes (pre-1957) as a "cruel joke" and an "impregnable stronghold" against social change. The milestone of Johnson's Senate years was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, whose passage he single-handedly engineered. As important as the bill was--both in and of itself and as a precursor to wider-reaching civil rights legislation--it was only close to Johnson's Southern "anti-civil rights" heart as a means to his dream: the presidency. Caro writes that not only does power corrupt, it "reveals," and that's exactly what this massive, scrupulously researched book does. A model of social, psychological, and political insight, it is not just masterful; it is a masterpiece. --H. O'Billovich
From Publishers Weekly
As a genre, Senate biography tends not to excite. The Senate is a genteel establishment engaged in a legislative process that often appears arcane to outsiders. Nevertheless, there is something uniquely mesmerizing about the wily, combative Lyndon Johnson as portrayed by Caro. In this, the third installment of his projected four-volume life of Johnson (following The Path to Power and Means of Ascent), Caro traces the Texan's career from his days as a newly elected junior senator in 1949 up to his fight for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. In 1953, Johnson became the youngest minority leader in Senate history, and the following year, when the Democrats won control, the youngest majority leader. Throughout the book, Caro portrays an uncompromisingly ambitious man at the height of his political and rhetorical powers: a furtive, relentless operator who routinely played both sides of the street to his advantage in a range of disputes. "He would tell us [segregationists]," recalled Herman Talmadge, "I'm one of you, but I can help you more if I don't meet with you." At the same time, Johnson worked behind the scenes to cultivate NAACP leaders. Though it emerges here that he was perhaps not instinctively on the side of the angels in this or other controversies, the pragmatic Senator Johnson nevertheless understood the drift of history well, and invariably chose to swim with the tide, rather than against. The same would not be said later of the Johnson who dwelled so glumly in the White House, expanding a war that even he, eventually, came to loathe. But that is another volume: one that we shall await eagerly. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
More of Caro's monumental biography.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
An Institution and The Man Who Changed It
By Michael Griswold
In Master of the Senate book three of Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson, one is first struck by something that we rarely see in historical biography in that the institution of the United States Senate that Lyndon Johnson entered in 1949 is a character in itself. Caro spends roughly 100 pages of the 1034 talking about the procedures, customs and history that had transformed the Senate from the great hall of debate the Founding Fathers wanted into a progress inhibiting body where legislation goes to die because of its unique institutions.
Master of the Senate can intimidate on sheer size alone, but it really doesn’t feel like over a thousand pages as one gets lost in these intricately woven tales and personalities such as Richard Russell, the Leland Olds affair, Lyndon Johnson as institution wrangler, and the intrigue over the 1956 Presidential Nomination among others. Caro once again excels at going in depth in creating these larger than life characters and situations. One feels the rage of Estes Kefauver as he’s passed over for Foreign Relations or Richard Russell’s loneliness, for example.
Lyndon Johnson is of course still Lyndon Johnson. Readers who revel in Johnson’s backroom deal making and questionably immoral behavior will find plenty to sink their teeth into as anything that could help him gain more power is seized on and we see his political genius in the 1957-58 fight over getting a civil rights bill through the Senate. This volume presents a more complex portrait of Johnson as caught between ambition and perhaps genuine feelings for minorities that often leaves the reader unsure of the truth.
I don’t know that anyone’s opinion of Lyndon Johnson will change through Master of the Senate, but it does present more nuance than the utter contempt the first two volumes of the series inspired.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Take a deep breath and invest the time
By M. Strong
There is no way around it - this book requires a very real investment of time. But what a payoff! In addition to having a really thick book to put on your shelf to impress your friends, this is one of the greatest biographies over written.
Caro makes the point early in this masterpiece that power does something far more interesting than corrupt... power reveals. Caro is fascinated with power's ability to pull back the curtain on the true nature of an individual. In this case, Caro selects Lyndon Johnson as his subject and introduces the reader to the man revealed by power: he is fascinating.
The book starts with a short history of the purpose and design of the Senate, which would make a terrific book on its own. This background proves critical to understanding the magnitude of Johnson's accomplishments in the Senate. Once the Senate is properly introduced, Caro begins to tell the story of Johnson's journey through his years in the Senate. The story is told in great detail, but Caro's storytelling is so good and so relevant that it never wanders towards being tedious or dull. Instead, you get one fascinating story after another that introduces you to the different facets of Johnson's personality.
As the story unfolds, you come to know a man with morals, but a man who is always willing to subvert his morals unless they align with his personal ambition. Johnson's ambition and talent are both so great that they lead him to accomplish things in a few short years that had never been done before in 150 years of Senate life.
In the end, Johnson finds a cause on which his morals and ambition align and the Senator from Texas becomes the unlikely champion of Civil Rights, a cause that saw no new legislation successfully pass through the U.S. Senate for 83 years.
It's hard to explain how good this book is, how easy it is to read and yet how much you learn. Highly recommended for fans of biography, history and politics. Spectacular.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Kiss Up, Kick Down
By Kurt Harding
At long last, I have finished this monster tome. After reading the first two volumes of Robert Caro's fascinating series on LBJ, I was eager to delve into this one. And I did, painstakingly and at a snail's pace as other obligations limited my reading time to 15-20 pages per day. But it was time well spent.
In this volume, Robert Caro shows how Lyndon Johnson did not rest on his laurels after a hard-stolen election to the Senate brought him closer to his ultimate goal. As a freshman senator, he was just one in a hundred, at the bottom of the seniority heap. But he had long ago learned how to find where real power resided in any organization of which he was part and his people skills (read boot-licking and schmoozing) and determination soon brought him close to those who mattered in the Senate. Georgia Senator Richard Russell was the Democratic power in the Senate at this time, a man whose nod could make or break any legislation or the career of almost any Democratic Senator and so Johnson made sure to get next to him. And it didn't hurt that House Speaker Sam Rayburn was solidly behind him as well.
Bootlicking wasn't Johnson's only forte, however. Once he was in a position of some authority, he made sure he was prepared for any subject that came up and more prepared than those senior to him. His thorough study of the Senate and his preparation to face the issues of the day quickly made him the go-to guy among his colleagues and that only served to widen the scope of his authority.
Southern Senators, led by Russell, saw in Johnson a future chance at putting a Southerner in the White House, an honor that had been denied any Southern candidate since the Civil War. And so they sometimes were willing to give in some on some of their demands in order to give Johnson a boost and national exposure as a Southern moderate on civil rights issues. Johnson knew that the Southerners needed him as much as he needed them, and he took full advantage of his position to get closer to his ultimate goal.
Johnson's colleagues were agape at how he took the former thankless task of being Majority Leader and turned that position from a mere honorific into a position of real influence and prestige. It had been a political graveyard for others, but Johnson was determined to make it work for him. He nearly always did his homework and with his knowledge of the Senate rules and his gift for strategy, was able to accomplish things that others thought impossible. Johnson was not only a master of give and take, he was unforgiving to any who crossed him, both friend and foe alike.
Of course, Senators holding safe seats were free to defy and even fight Johnson, but as the Senate was probably more competitive then than it is today, Johnson could and did use his power to withhold crucial campaign help from recalcitrant Senators and was happy to see their defeat.
Caro thinks that LBJ's greatest accomplishment was to get a civil rights bill passed while he was Majority Leader, despite the fact that by the time it was passed it was watered down to a mere gesture. But that bill, in Johnson's crude way of phrasing, had broken the Senate's virginity on the matter of civil rights, so that in the future other civil rights bills could be pushed through more easily.
That triumph made him slightly more palatable to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and with the help and friendship of key liberals in the media, in labor and in politics, Johnson was able to burnish his growing reputation as a different kind of Southerner.
The portion of the book that follows the story of how Johnson got civil rights legislation passed over strong objections from both the Southern camp and the liberals (who felt the bill meaningless) is somewhat anti-climactic. There were no more Johnson accomplishments to match the drama of the civil rights battle, and Caro saves the story of Johnson's fight for both the Democratic presidential nomination and a third term in the Senate for an upcoming fourth volume on the LBJ saga. He does, however, show how Johnson schemed to hang on to Senate power after being elected as Vice-President. He seems a bit of a pitiful figure trying to maintain his old position when it is clear that both his old friends and his opponents want him to move on and to maintain the separation of power between the executive and legislative branches.
The recent Senate fight over John Bolton's nomination to be UN ambassador and the depiction of his style as kiss up, kick down
made me think that the phrase "Kiss Up, Kick Down" is the perfect way to describe LBJ's personal style. At the beginning of his career, he did a lot of kissing up. By the time he solidified his position as Majority Leader he gave full vent to his desire to kick down anyone or anything in his way.
The story of the rise of LBJ is fascinating indeed and Robert Caro tells it in an engaging and penetrating way. I heartily recommend Master of the Senate to anyone interested in the enigma that was LBJ, but I recommend that you read the first two volumes before reading this one so that you have a complete understanding of Johnson by the time you are through.
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