

|
The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) (Paperback)
by Robert A. Caro
Category:
American presidency, American history, Biography |
Market price: ¥ 198.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
Good for Gifts
|
If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
 Detail |
 Author |
 Description |
 Excerpt |
 Reviews |
|
|
Author: Robert A. Caro
Publisher: Vintage
Pub. in: February, 1990
ISBN: 0679729453
Pages: 960
Measurements: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01209
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0679729457
|
Rate this product:
|
- MSL Picks -
The text closely matches information about LBJ's election hijinks described in a much later book, "The Fall of the Duke of Duval" by John Clark. Johnson's first try for senate in 1941 failed, not because of his enemies but because powerful liquor lobby forces wanted Gov. W.Lee O'Daniel, his opponent, out of Texas to Washington,DC to keep him from appointing prohibitionists to the state liquor control board.
Johnson would not have won his second try for U.S. Senator in 1948 without the corruption of the famous ballot box 13 in Jim Wells county, Texas - vote fraud orchestrated by "The Duke of Duval", George Berham Parr. Mr. John Clark's test in "The fall of the Duke of Duval" provides full disclosure of the vote theft that made LBJ win this election.
As a third generation native Texan, I can tell you LBJ was not popular with many Texans and was losing by a few hundred votes LEGALLY in 1948. But Parr came through from South Texas and provided about 200 extra votes that made LBJ win by about 87 votes out of 1,000,000 cast. He never was considered Presidential Material but was selected as VP to get Kennedy more southern votes. Even at that Kennedy nearly lost. Considering Kennedy's age, no one expected LBJ to last long enough to becomne president after 2 Kennedy terms.
A very good book showing LBJ just didn't get the way he was "Yesterday".
(From quoting Alan G. Smith, USA)
|
Customers who bought this product also bought:
|
Robert A. Caro was graduated from Princeton University, was for six years an award-winning investigative reporter for Newsday, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
To create The Power Broker, Caro spent seven years tracing and talking with hundreds of men and women who worked with, for, or against Robert Moses, and examining mountains of files never before opened to the public. The Power Broker won both the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians for the book that “exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.” It was chosen by Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century.
To research The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro and his wife, Ina, moved from his native New York City to the Texas Hill Country and then to Washington, D.C., to live in the locales in which Johnson grew up and in which he built, while still young, his first political machines. He has spent years examining documents at the Johnson Library in Austin and interviewing men and women connected with Johnson’s life, many of whom had never before been interviewed. The first volume of the Johnson work, The Path to Power, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the best nonfiction work of 1982. The second volume, Means of Ascent, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1990. In preparation for writing Master of the Senate, the third volume, Caro immersed himself in the world of the United States Senate, spending week after week in the gallery, in committee rooms, in the Senate Office Building, and interviewing hundreds of people, from pages and cloakroom clerks to senators and administrative aides. Master of the Senate won the 2002 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Among the numerous other awards Caros has won are the H.L. Mencken Award, the Carr P. Collins, Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
|
From Publisher
This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered. In this book, we are brought as close as we have ever been to a true perception of political genius and the American political process. Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, was a number one national best seller and, like The Path to Power, received the National Book Critics Circle Award.
|
View all 10 comments |
Amazon.com (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
The profound understanding of the uses and abuses of power Robert Caro displayed in his 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, is a scathing achievement the author surpassed with panache in this, his second book. Caro's dogged research and refusal to accept received wisdom results in an eye-opening portrait that unforgettably captures the titanic personality of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973). Though stronger on Johnson's duplicity and naked self-promotion than his intelligence and charm, Caro nails it all. He chronicles the evolution of an attention-demanding youth from the Texas hill country into a seasoned congressman who would abandon his ardent espousal of the New Deal as soon as it ceased to be expedient. The dirty details begin with college elections that earn young Lyndon a reputation as a crook and a liar; Caro goes on to unravel financial shenanigans of impressive ingenuity. Johnson's consuming desire to get ahead and his political genius "unencumbered by philosophy or ideology" are staggering. The White House, Great Society, and Vietnam lie ahead when the main narrative closes in 1941, but the roots of Johnson's future achievements and tragic failures are laid bare. This biography may well stand as the best book written in the second half of the 20th century about personal ambition inextricably linked with historic change. --Wendy Smith |
Washington Post, USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
Proof that we live in a great age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caro's evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson's unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually works are-let it be said flat out-at the summit of American historical writing. |
Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek, USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
Not only a historical but a literary event. An epic biography . . . A sweeping, richly detailed portrait . . . vivid [with] Caro's astonishing concern for the humanity of his characters. An awesome achievement. |
Alden Whitman, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, USA
<2008-03-07 00:00>
The major biography of recent years. Brilliant . . . Magisterial . . . Caro has given us an American life of compelling fascination. A benchmark beside which other biographies will be measured for some time to come. |
View all 10 comments |
|
|
|
|