Is this the trap?
Before gearing up for a multi-month book club spanning thousands of pages, it’s probably good to ask yourself why: Why are these guys so excited about the fourth volume of Caro’s work, and why would I want to follow along?
Here’s the pitch: On their own merits Path, Ascent, and Master are masterpieces of their genre. These biographies are extremely well-researched, they’re beautifully written as narratives, and they take as their subject an interesting and complex character.
This isn’t the main reason for taking the journey though. The background to the life of Lyndon Johnson is what sets this series apart. Here you will find the settling of the West, rural electrification, FDR’s first 100 days, court packing, pacifism and war making, and much more — along with wonderful portrayals of the people who helped propel LBJ to the presidency.
Particularly Master of the Senate is the perfect tale of institutional power and how it can be wielded in the hand of a master. Without revealing too much, the book makes the US Senate its main character and describes how the institution is transformed from a sleepy, old-fashioned body into a main arena of American politics. In a time where political capacity to and for change on the system level is a major point of discussion and criticism, Master can be said to describe the genesis of both function as dysfunction.
Highly recommend joining us to read the first three volumes of Robert Caro’s LBJ biography over the next few months. It’ll make you wish we hadn’t watered-down “epic” all these years. The pace will be pretty easy—only 15 or so pages a night—and you still have more than a week to track down a copy and start with us. (And of course, time to catch-up if you need to wait until the holidays to start digging deep into a book.)
