The Years of Lyndon Johnson : : the Path to Power

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	921 Johnson, Lyndon	4-week checkout	Due 05-01-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Political Figures / Johnson, Lyndon	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024

The first of three projected volumes.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The Best Biography Ever submitted by Jan Wolter on June 19, 2013, 8:21am When I was in school, history classes would generally make it as far as the Civil War only to realize that there was only a week left to the school year, so the teacher would say "Reconstruction, WWI, WWII, bye, have a nice summer!" because after all, the important parts of American History are the Revolution and the Civil War and everyone knows what little there is worth knowing about the rest. It was only much later in life that I discovered that recent history is much more important than ancient history, because it influences the shape of the world we live in much more, and the issues of those times connect much more directly to the issues of our times. And I don't think there is another book which will teach you more about the post-WWII history of America, and teach it in a more engaging and readable fashion, than Robert Caro's series on the life of Lyndon Johnson. Caro has a remarkable ability not just to tell the story of the man, but to provide just the right amount of context, in descriptions of what was going on, and who the other major players were.

So it would be a great book, even if the main subject, LBJ, didn't turn out to be really, really interesting. Which was a surprise to me. I'd kind of had the impression he was this mushroom that occupied the presidency after the gleaming reign of JFK. But it seems he was a man driven to do anything to gain power, a perfect scoundrel who'd lie and flatter and blackmail to get what he wanted, who worked himself into a hospital bed striving to get himself elected to his first office, and when that wasn't enough, stole the election with faked ballots. A miserable creature, and a master manipulator of other men, who, every now and then, when it seemed likely to serve the goal of getting him to the presidency, would do something magnificent, like almost single-handedly breaking the 100 year log jam that prevented ANY civil rights laws from passing the Senate. That a fellow so rotten could do things that were so good is cause for amazement. This is a book so interesting that I promise that there will be sections that you'll want to read out loud or retell to the folks around you.

The original plan was for a series of three books. Four have been written and we've only made it halfway through Johnson's presidency, so there is more to come. If you read the whole series in a row, there are places where it becomes a bit repetitive, because he's reviewing things for people who don't necessarily remember the previous books, but this is only a mild annoyance.

Interesting submitted by onpaper24 on August 27, 2021, 9:34pm I love books about presidents and this one does not disappoint.