The Passage of power is a book fourth volume. Robert Caro’s epic biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, encompasses the period of LBJ’s deepest humiliation and his greatest accomplishments .It is a searing account of ambition derailed by personal demons in Johnson’s unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. It is a painful depiction of “greatness comically humbled” when Johnson gave up his unbridled authority as Senate majority leader to become John F. Kennedy’s disdained vice president.
What is the book all about?
Most of all, it is a triumphant drama of “political genius in action”. As Johnson smoothly took up the reins of office in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination. Made his predecessor’s liberal agenda his own, and bent Congress to his will. As Kennedy had never been able to do. Caro combines the skills of a historian, an investigative reporter and a novelist. In this searching study of the transformative effect of power — its possession, its loss, its restoration. On the character and destiny of a man. Who from his teens had one overriding goal: to be president of the United States.
It is more of a political biography rather than normal biography . It has successfully run for 3 volume and even the fourth volume is great. Robert A. Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson. It is one of the richest, most intensive and most revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American president. It is the magnum opus of a writer perfectly suited to his task: the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer-historian, chronicler also of Robert Moses in The Power Broker, whose inspired research and profound understanding of the nature of ambition and the dynamics of power have made him a peerless explicator of political lives.
“By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think, and read, American history . . . It’s his immense talent as a writer that has made his biography of Johnson one of America’s most amazing literary achievements . . . As absorbing as a political thriller . . .A masterpiece, unlike any other work of American history published in the past. It’s true that there will never be another Lyndon B. Johnson, but there will never be another Robert A. Caro, either.” –NPR
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About the Author
Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American Journalist and author known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson.
After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses , which was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He has since written four of a planned five volumes of The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), a biography of the former president.
