The Passage of Power focuses on the five worst years of Johnson's career - his loss to John F. It's tempting to say Robert Caro knows more about Lyndon Johnson that Johnson ever knew himself. To write them, Caro and his wife and researcher, Ina, conducted thousands of interviews, spent several years reading through Johnson's papers at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, and much more.
The first two, The Path to Power (1982) and Means of Ascent (1990), won National Book Critics Circle awards the third, Master of the Senate (2002), won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. "Magisterial" is a faint description of these deeply researched, beautifully written, always insightful works. (Now 76, Caro is 12 years older than Johnson was when he died.) That was 36 years and four books ago he expects to complete one more volume in the next two to three years.
When Caro set out in 1976 to write a biography of Johnson, he expected it would fill three volumes and take about six years to write. The impact of those people and those larger forces on Johnson is analyzed with unfailing clarity. What is more, Caro re-creates for us the times in which Johnson came to power, from the broad sweep of history (the civil rights struggle, the Cold War) to the individual sketches of a huge cast of characters.
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