From Powerful to Powerless

The fourth installment of Robert Caro's majestic and sweeping biography of LBJ is a mammoth achievement and ranks favorably with all prior installments.

I stumbled onto the series a couple of years ago after seeing Robert Caro on a television program and began my exploration of the series with "Master of the Senate." Since the first two installments have not been made into audio books yet, I purchased "The Path to Power" & "Means of Ascent" on my Kindle and found both to be riveting.

For those of you who have gone thorough the entire series as I have, you know that LBJ's life contained periodic reversals. This installment chronicles the 3 years he spent in the most desolate wilderness of them all: The vice presidency.

Daniel Webster is reported to have said when the Whig Party offered him the chance to be vice president, "I do not propose to be buried until I am dead." LBJ--after he bungled securing the 1960 nomination and JFK mopped the floor with him--made a different calculation; to friends who wondered why on earth he would trade the second most powerful post in the land (senate majority leader) for the vice presidency he said, "seven of them got to be president without even being elected."

For 3 years LBJ was ignored, insulted, and treated with thinly veiled contempt by the Kennedy group--particularly by Robert F. Kennedy who DETESTED Lyndon Johnson. Newspaper headlines began asking, "Whatever Happened to LBJ?" His genius for legislation went untapped and Kennedy's domestic program was floundering.

Then it happened...

Half the book covers a roughly 7 week period of time. The coverage of the assassination is the summit of "history as thriller" and finds few if any equals.

For conspiracy theory buffs, sorry, but Caro does not give credence to the idea LBJ was involved. Caro has chronicled just about every fault Johnson has from the megalomaniacal to the scatological, but murder isn't one of them.

Grover Gardner, as another reviewer already mentioned, was the only possible choice for this book. He lends it his usual gravity and precision. Why Caro hasn't contracted him to record the first two books in the series, I don't know. "Means of Ascent" was so funny in places I needed a tissue by my side to wipe the tears.

Caro's penchant for exhaustive research has meant that he has taken over 35 years to produce four books. The man is now 75 and he still has all of Johnson's election and Vietnam to cover. Let's hope his health holds out and he finishes the job.

82 people found this helpful

The most dramatic time in U.S. history

This book can stand alone. It covers 1958 to 1964 a most interesting time in our history. It covers in depth the run for the 1960 election and the election of the Kennedy/Johnson ticket. I was surprised at the detailed information provided about the hateful treatment of Johnson by Robert Kennedy. Caro does show the good and bad points of Johnson and the Kennedy's and presents a well document history of the time leading up to during and after the assassination. The six month following the assassination showed Johnson at his best. He was able to use all his skills and depths of contact he had acquired in a life time of polictics to bring the government and this country under control and back to business. His passing of the civil rights act was a great accomplishment that everyone else had failed at since FDR. The book mostly deals with the 40 days after the assassination and the enormous problems Johnson faced. Gardner did a great job with the narration. The book does make me want read all the volumes in this series. The book is long and there was some repeating of information which could have been edited, other than that it is a great book. I could hardly put the book down.

28 people found this helpful

Great book about a very important man

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Robert A. Caro has done a fantastic job in this volume in his life of LBJ. I have lived in Texas for many years and to hear some of the background of public and not so public figures that I have heard of but did not know to much about is a real plus. The author niether glorifies or denigrates LBJ but seems to try to explain this very complex man.Since this is the fourth volume on the life of LBJ it gives some background and even referes to spcific chapters of prior volumes.The only series that seems to be comparable is the multi volume work on Churchill by Martin Gilbert, which I have read is the longest biography in the english language.

Which character – as performed by Grover Gardner – was your favorite?

Grover Gardner's narration is excellent. He is neither overly dramatic nor to dry in his naration.

Any additional comments?

One of the things about this book that I really like are the authors comments about other books written about LBJ and puts them in prespective.My regret is that the first two volumes of this series does not seem to be on audilbe which is a real lack.

18 people found this helpful

NOT HAVING WHOLE SERIES IS KILLING ME !!!

Why wont someone put out the missing books of this astounding and important work in audible format???? I know at least one of them was done on cassette by grover gardner years ago because I saw it for sale on ebay. Im sure the other ones must have been done as well. Oh great mucky mucks at audible, please do something about this sinful state of affairs.

Wondering if this book is good? Of course ! If Caro's name is on it- it's 5 stars, end of story,
har-har

16 people found this helpful

One of the best biography's I've ever listened to

Wow! is all I can say after finishing this book. It must stand as one of the great biography's of all time. Caro has woven a tale of such complexity that it defies any summary. Having grown up during the years of this book, I was completely unaware of the enormous achievement of Lyndon Johnson during the six months following Kennedy's assassination. I had not read the previous three volumes and so was unaware of the complex nature of Johnson. It didn't matter. Caro so thoroughly revealed his character and so seamlessly wove it into the history of those pivotal years that the book almost seemed like a novel. I literally could not stop listening at certain points in the book. It was engaging as any of the best suspense novels: How will he get that bill passed? Who will he have to threaten, who will he have to massage, what promises will he have to make? He was able to facilitate the passage of the unpassable, stalled in Congress for thirty five years, Civil Rights Bill in four months at one of the most volatile moments in our history. He began the process four days after assuming the Presidency. Unbelievable! People (myself included) took this unbelievable achievement with a blase' attitude-Oh, no big deal. This book puts this dismissive in a deeply buried coffin where it belongs. As always, the superficial picture of famous people is often taken as the truth of who they really are and what they really achieved. It has often been said that the legacy of John F. Kennedy was most greatly served by his assassination. Although a cruel statement, this book proves this assertion. The book shows that Kennedy was completely impotent in domestic affairs. He had no idea how to deal with a recalcitrant Congress who ran circles around him and he had not achieved one significant piece of legislation during his three years. He had great ideas but it took the political genius of Lyndon Johnson to bring them to fruition and change the course of American history. It is sad that Johnson's great achievements will always be overshadowed by his horrible decisions regarding the Viet Nam war. Caro hints at this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dichotomy at the end of this book. The greatness of this book is how well Caro elucidates Johnson's internal contradictory devils, how these devils were used for the greatest good and then for the greatest evil. Caro also pulls the curtain back on how Washington really works. Considering what is happening in Washington today, it is illuminating to see how things have not changed much. It only emphasizes the greatness of Lyndon Johnson and how his particular political genius single handedly moved our Country to a level of greatness that may never be achieved again. When the moment called, he rose to it like no other President in our history. Hopefully, history will give Johnson credit as one of the great President's we've had. If you like biography, put this book at the top of your list.

14 people found this helpful

The best kind of history

Where does The Passage of Power rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Near the top.

What did you like best about this story?

The author not only describes specific events in detail, but gave me a far deeper understanding than I ever had before of not just Johnson and the many other characters involved, but also the workings of American politics, and the way power might have been brokered in other countries and other times.

14 people found this helpful

Well worth the super size length

Any additional comments?

Why jump into a mammoth, 32 hour read, volume 4 of a projected 5, in progress before many of us were born and volume 5 due some years from now?Two answers - for a first look, it stands alone, riveting, full of the story-teller's perfect details and timing.If you thought you'd read all the good stuff, Caro read it and cross-checked and then interviewed the author or surviving player with the questions you might have asked.History and biography can meet and exceed the best fiction, if only because reality is stranger, wilder and harder to freeze into safe, comfort.The non-LBJ characters are vivid, detailed, memorable, quoted and described by the distilled insight of libraries of books, letters and interviews. Myself, I've wondered about Bobby Kennedy, studied under fellows who worked with him, idolized and loved him. Caro shows us that great gift for friendship, and how it shaped written history, but adds the dark side with light, shadow and colors. The JFK portrait alone is worth the read, with the JFK-RFK relationship drawn from anecdotes. Found myself seeing new parts of a president by fully imagining what RFK the hit man, lightning rod and alter ego must say about JFK off-stage giving orders, or onstage communicating with his brother without words.Notes on framing - Caro writes that he found no direct evidence for the "LBJ murdered JFK" theories, and you can read the reviews at Amazon.com for some pointers by opposing authors and readers.A better path into what-if questions, IMHO, is "Tears of Autumn" by espionage expert McCarry, with an Oswald portrait by Stephen King in his recent time travel novel.
And Vietnam is mostly left for volume 5 - but I found eery parallels between RFK and LBJ losing all control, dignity, RFK defending the Bay of Pigs and firing an advisor who'd proven right, and LBJ chewing-out senior military men posing too-hard choices.

14 people found this helpful

Great incite into a interesting, yet tragic man.

I knew little about Lyndon Johnson before reading this book, yet having lived through his presidency as a young boy, and being fascinated with this period in history I was drawn to this book. I came away knowing that Johnson was a shrewd politician, a manipulator of men, a lier and the perfect person to be vice president when John Kennedy was killed. This book covers the period of time up until his first state of the union address in January 1964 in great detail, but it's hardly ever boring.
His intuitive knowledge of how to keep the government running, his ability to keep the Kennedy men on and working for him, thus keep some communality in the government was brilliant, especially given the fact that most of those men regarded Johnson a “corn pone” He was not educated at an ivy league school, did not have the family linage of JFK, yet he had the working knowledge of how to get a bill through congress that Kennedy didn't have. He was able to get part of Kennedy's agenda passed at just the right time, and then continuing to move forward with his own agenda.
The story was good, Grover Gardner's narration was good, not great but I wanted to continue to listen till the end. I will be looking for the next book in the series.

8 people found this helpful

Informative

A very interesting account of this time in LBJ's life. So much I was not aware of. The fued between Johnson and Bobby Kennedy and the way Johnson was treated as VP brought me to tears at times only to then feel sorry for Bobby in the next chapter. Such a captivating time in the history of American politics. As an Aussie, I don't know where my obsession with the Kennedys comes from, but an obsession it is and I loved learning more about them from the other side of the coin. Recommend it to anyone interested in this era.

6 people found this helpful

It takes a book this vast to really see the story

I cannot imagine how much effort it takes to assemble and write a book with this high quality and breadth. Now at last I can say I have a true sense of how a stretch of US history and Washington DC (with its myriad forces and personalities) intersect. The author takes the classic high school chart of government branches and peoples each with clear-cut personalities with all their regional attachments and so on. The story also reaches back into the 20th century as needed (often summarizing bits of the earlier Caro-Johnson books) to give context to the times addressed. An example is the mini-book (one of several) that is the tale of the Southern senators and their strategies stretching far back into US history (and casting a shadow over us still). Here you will find elaborate portraits of others alongside Johnson, such as Bobby Kennedy. I have never seen a book so fully address the evolution of such persons as these. I am deeply impressed at every aspect of this book, which is several books in itself, seamlessly blended. Hanging on through a lengthy passage of the story (when the details may seem heavy and the going slow: events after Kennedy's death seemed interminable like a dirge of their own) is always rewarded. The narration is ideal.

5 people found this helpful