**WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES
TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY
BOOK PRIZE
*Book Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson
displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the
Times of London to acclaim it as "one of the truly great political
biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece."
The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most
frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career--1958 to1964.
It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had
created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the
wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that
disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the
presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in
the moment it took an assassin's bullet to reach its mark.
By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known
as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest
Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the
young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro gives us an
unparalleled account of the machinations behind both the nomination and
Kennedy's decision to offer Johnson the vice presidency, revealing the
extent of Robert Kennedy's efforts to force Johnson off the ticket. With
the consummate skill of a master storyteller, he exposes the savage
animosity between Johnson and Kennedy's younger brother, portraying one
of America's great political feuds. Yet Robert Kennedy's overt contempt
for Johnson was only part of the burden of humiliation and isolation he
bore as Vice President. With a singular understanding of Johnson's heart
and mind, Caro describes what it was like for this mighty politician to
find himself altogether powerless in a world in which power is the
crucial commodity.
For the first time, in Caro's breathtakingly vivid narrative, we see the
Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnson's eyes. We watch Johnson
step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain
predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the
executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within
weeks--grasping the reins of the presidency with supreme mastery--he
propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of
Kennedy's death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant
Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes
clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate
now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without
doubt Johnson's finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments
were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam.
In its exploration of this pivotal period in Johnson's life--and in the
life of the nation--The Passage of Power is not only the story of how
he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest
purpose of the presidency but is, as well, a revelation of both the
pragmatic potential in the presidency and what can be accomplished when
the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the
pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation. It is an
epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the
peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caro's work,
confirming Nicholas von Hoffman's verdict that "Caro has changed the art
of political biography."
