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| Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, (Vintage) | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert A. Caro
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (139 reviews)
Sales Rank: 19156
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1232
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.8
ISBN: 0394720954
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.923092
EAN: 9780394720951
ASIN: 0394720954
Publication Date: April 2003
Release Date: April 25, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 134 more reviews...
 Ambition and Narcissism November 6, 2008
I wish I could remember what I thought of LBJ when I voted for the first time in 1960. Moving to Berkeley that Fall to work on my doctorate, I kept my residency in Illinois in order to vote for JFK in what would be a crucial swing state. Those who believe Gore was robbed of the election in 2000 forget that JFK won by something like one vote in every county in the country. Mine was one of those. But I can only remember LBJ through the lens of his civil rights presidency and his tragic flaw, Vietnam. Listening to the first three volumes of Caro's work on tape, I can't help feeling that it in order to make sense of the LBJ he has painted we need to know what happened to him when he became president. Where is volume four? Were my feelings toward LBJ in 1960 analogous to what I thought of JFK's phony missile gap and Cuba bashing. Did I regard LBJ simply as a bad guy JFK needed as VP in order to get elected (As it turned out Cuba policy was not expediency until JFK woke up during the Bay of Pigs; after the election the missile gap simply was disappeared). Did I have any idea what a fowl piece of work LBJ was? Well Caro leaves us no doubt. Although I tired of the author's repeated descriptions of how LBF invaded what is called personal space: his ham hands on people shoulders, his iron grip through lapel holes---I probably would have slugged him---,had little use for the detail descriptions of the Senate chamber and would have had liked more on the political context of the third volume---what was going on after the mid fifties besides civil rights---, Caro's work is indeed monumental. We have LBJ ambitious, lying, manipulating and deeply narcissistic. He was in bed with some of the most reactionary men in the US, southern racists, McCarthyite anti-communists and reactionary Texas oil barons. LBJ's maiden "We of the South" speech and his sycophantic manipulation of lonely Richard Russell and Sam Rayburn, let alone his viscious redbaiting in his destruction of Leland Olds, are more than enough to condemn him to the trash barrel of history. His abuse of Lady Bird and then abject dependence on her after his heart attack earn him nothing but contempt. How did he pull it off for so many years and no one successfully expose him? Caro sees LBJ as a master, well that must have been the case for the years covered by the three volumes. Master magician at manipulation of people, master of working the Senate system, master of keeping his backers out of the lime light, master of tricking the Senate liberals, master at manipulating the press. And yet what did it all achieve. He ran a Truman like committee during the Korean war supposedly to expose corruption in war preparation, but unlike Truman driving around the country really looking, Johnson's committee garnered phony press coverage but did almost nothing. He was able to make the Senate a more efficient institution, but to what end. In all of Caro's writing I don't have a sense of what LBJ accomplished politically. He stifled civil rights under the guise of passing a civil rights bill. He enriched his backers, but what was his role in the Cold War, economic justice, etc. Maybe I missed that in all the detail of how he ran the Senate.
In volume one, Caro's history of the Senate is interesting. I get it that the Senate stood in the way of reform in the years after reconstruction. His treatment of Russell is masterful both in how Russell kept the appearance of Southern liberalism despite the vicious racist and cold warrior which lay behind the facade. Although Caro paints a picture of Johnson manipulating Russell, Johnson really carried Russell's water: stymie civil rights. As the country changed after WWII and the power of both northern liberals and Negroes grew, Russell felt the South would be outnumbered unless it planted a Trojan horse in the liberal camp. Johnson was to be that Trojan horse. The 1956 civil rights debate revealed Russell's true colors when he lost it on the Senate floor, and Johnson's final bill revealed to the liberals how empty Johnson's liberalism really was. In addition Johnson's flawed attempt at getting the 1956 nomination when he had no chance showed how limited his mastery could be and how blinded he was by his narcissism. Because I listened to the books out of order, vol. 2, 3, then 1, and am a bit confused, it seems to me like Johnson went into some sort of eclipse after '56 as the Republicans began to move leftward to grab the initiative from the Democrats, particularly on civil rights, and Johnson faced the underlying contradiction that he couldn't satisfy his Southern racist backers and woo the northern liberals at the same time. Caro gives us a glimpse of what came next when he shows how the Senate rejected Johnson's' attempts to maintain control once he became vice-president and how his failure completely deflated Johnson. After Johnson left the presidency (in disgrace as I remember it), did his narcissism again invert?
I think the most dramatic parts of Caro's books are his description of civil rights in the United States. Although I worked in the Chicago stock yards in the late forties and early fifties, remember well its strict color line, its shuffling blacks, experienced segregation in New Orleans, the Klan in Indianapolis and am a veteran of the Congress of Racial Equality in the 60s', I found myself becoming teary-eyed at Caro's rendition of the struggle for equality, the violence of lynching in Russell's Georgia, the hatred that dripped from the lips of Eastland and his ilk on the Senate floor. How Johnson could have pulled off any appearance of liberality is testament to how powerless Humphrey, Lehman, Douglas and others were in a racist country where Southerners had a hammerlock on the Senate. That Johnson and Russell could, through their superior understanding of Senate rules, outmaneuver the liberals was testament to the latter's' naivete, but when push came to shove there was the filibuster and no way to overcome that---as with Bush's 2000 win---the constitution did not provide for any way around the Senate's inbuilt conservatism, even though Caro, says that prior to the civil war the Senate was the chamber for debate of great issues. After Reconstruction it became a tool of entrenched power and a stumbling block to change. It is interesting how Southern Senators could throw up Reconstruction as an evil, equivalent to Communism, in debates about civil rights. Reconstruction is, in my mind, a big hole in American history. Besides the dated works of Foner and chapters in history textbooks, I have found no good history of Reconstruction.
Well LBJ changed the US when he inherited the presidency. How that fit into who he was before 1960 is still a mystery to me. In fact there are other mysteries: his affair with Helen Gehagen Douglas, how he could get away with his abuse of the people around him, why was he never exposed in terms of his real allies---hard to image that in the age of the internet--- or maybe he was but it never took for some reason. Caro pictures LBJ as a consummate con man. Was he? Could Hubert Horatio Humphrey have been so cowed when snubbed for his hubris in his maiden Senate year (and later tutored on behavior by LBJ), that he didn't see through his one time mentor? I remember the New Left Power Structure pamphlets about LBJ, Brown and Root and Vietnam. But that was all after '66 or '67. I NEED volume four.
Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World
 three instead of one! November 2, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Because Amazon were consistently telling me, by mistake, that my credit card details were invalid I re-ordered the book twice more; it then turned out that there was no problem with my credit card and as a result I received three copies of the book instead of one. I have returned two of these, at considerable expense, requesting a refund of the cost of the two books and of the postage. So far I have heard nothing. A pretty lousy service all round, leaving me almost GBP 90 out of pocket.Will I ever get my money back?
A Treatise on Leadership August 20, 2008
Caro's triology on LBJ is unrivaled, and this volume might lay claim to the best of the bunch. LBJ's genius in leading the Senate is put on display, but also his raw ambition and dishonesty. Caro shows how LBJ is a model of how to lead and not to lead at the same time.
johnson and more July 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had read Robert Caro's book on Robert Moses, and I found Master of the Senate to be an equally well-written and insightful read about an even more complicated figure. Readers get a real sense of the dark character of Lyndon Johnson. The book also offers a revealing view of the inner workings of the U.S. Senate. His portraits of Richard Russell and Sam Rayburn are particularly poignant. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in 20th-century U.S. history, and for anyone who enjoys monumental biographies.
When is the 4th volume coming out? April 28, 2008
Anyone know? This is a masterful book series. The one on LBJ's presidency should be the best.
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