Other editions of book The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power

This biography tells the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The book is part of a four-volume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson - the successor to President John F. Kennedy. This book charts the boyhood of Lyndon Johnson through the depression years to his debut as congressman and his defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, of the power for which he hungered. By the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize. Robert Caro also wrote "The Power Broker", "Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" and "The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol 2: The Means of Ascent".

I loved "The Path to Power" but I held off on reading this volume because I could not understand why Caro would devote an entire volume to seven years in LBJ's life. After I read this book, I have no doubt that this decision was a good one. These years--particularly the 1948 Democratic Senatorial Primary--were some of the most historically significant events on the last hundred years. It was this election that perhaps more than any other lay the foundation for politics as we know it. Without the eventual win in this election, Caro argues that LBJ's political career would have been finished. If that were true, he never would have gone on to be president. And if that did not happen, one most ask would Vietnam or "The Great Society" ever have happened quite the way they did. Caro is very convincing in arguing that this dramatic election is one of the most important in U.S. History.(Amazon customer_

‘The greatest biography of our era … Essential reading for those who want to comprehend power and politics’ The TimesRobert A. Caro’s legendary, multi-award-winning biography of US President Lyndon Johnson is a uniquely riveting and revelatory account of power, political genius and the shaping of twentieth-century America.This first instalment tells of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country, revealing in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy and ambition that set LBJ apart. It charts his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as a Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate and his attainment, nonetheless, at the age of thirty-one of the power for which he hungered.