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Summary
Summary
In Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro brings alive Lyndon Johnson in his wilderness years.
Here, Johnson's almost mythic personality--part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculating--is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his 1941 campaign for the Senate-the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut-through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it).
The culminating drama--the explosive heart of the book--is Caro's illumination, based on extraordinarily detailed investigation, of one of the great political mysteries of the century. Having immersed himself in Johnson's life and world, Caro is able to reveal the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson was not believed capable of winning, which he "had to" win or face certain political death, and which he did win-by 87 votes, the "87 votes that changed history."
Telling that epic story "in riveting and eye-opening detail," Caro returns to the American consciousness a magnificent lost hero. He focuses closely not only on Johnson, whom we see harnessing every last particle of his strategic brilliance and energy, but on Johnson's "unbeatable" opponent, the beloved former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, who embodied in his own life the myth of the cowboy knight and was himself a legend for his unfaltering integrity. And ultimately, as the political duel between the two men quickens--carrying with it all the confrontational and moral drama of the perfect Western--Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new--the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.
Author Notes
Robert Allan Caro was born October 30, 1935 in New York. He went to Princeton University, where he majored in English and became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian. Caro began his professional career as a reporter with the New Brunswick Daily Home News. He took a brief leave to work for the Middlesex County Democratic Party as a publicist. He went on to six years as an investigative reporter with the Long Island newspaper Newsday. Robert Caro then went on to write about influential people in New York. His work The Power Broker was a biography on New York urban planner Robert Moses, that highlighted the fight for a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay. He then went on to write about Lyndon Johnson's life in a 5 volume set. Caro's books portray Johnson as a complex character who he also saw as a visionary progressive. He enjoyed writing about politicians and their use of power. For his biographies, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, the National Book Award, the Francis Parkman Prize which is awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that "best exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist" two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the H.L. Mencken Award, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters. In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, the highest award in the humanities given in this country and in 2012 his title Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson made the New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Received too late for review: Vol. II of Caro's monumental history of LBJ. Through what the publisher calls ""a special distribution arrangement,"" books will arrive in bookstores around the country on one day only, 3/14--possibly to orchestrate interest in what the publisher describes as ""the heart of this book,"" Caro's revelations about exactly how Johnson won--by 87 votes, in a runoff campaign that's been tainted by rumor for 40 years--the Texas senatorial election of 1948. Even those revelations aside, this volume--with a first printing of 250,000--is likely to be extraordinary: Vol. I, The Path to Power, was named best nonfiction book of 1982 by the National Book Critics Circle, while Caro's 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, won a Pulitzer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
The second volume of Caro's biography opens with a poignant vignette, set in 1965, of Lyndon Johnson's embrace of black voting rights, intended to show that LBJ could be constructive, even courageous, in his use of power. Effective statesmanship, however, is not the subject of this book. As was the case in The Path to Power (CH, Apr'83), which covers LBJ's life to 1940, Caro assumes the role of prosecuting attorney. Johnson emerges as a devious, manipulative individual who would do or say almost anthing to achieve and wield power. Means of Ascent, which treats the years 1941-48, portrays an unfulfilled Congressman obsessed with money and advancement. LBJ was a philanderer who bullied his wife, his aides, and even his peers. Uninterested in substantive issues facing the Congress, he operated behind the scenes and told colleagues whatever he tought they wanted to hear. He also shamelessly trumpeted wartime exploits that had the barest connection to truth. In the hotly contested US Senate race of 1948 against Coke Stevenson, Johnson stole the votes he needed to win. Caro brings Johnson to life and assays his motives as no other scholar has done yet. Ambitious, provocative, and expansive, Means of Ascent, like LBJ himself, commands attention. A must for all college and university collections. -M. J. Birkner, Gettysburg College
