The chapter in that book about rural electrification in Texas was OUTSTANDING. It really made me not take electrical power for granted any longer. Also it took what seemed like a banal subject and made it absolutely FASCINATING.
In the second, his naked ambition and lack of character is fully shown to take him down the path of personal and political power and corruption.
Johnson had the senate election stolen from him by Governor Pappy "Pass the Biscuits" O'Daniel (who was transplanted to Mississipi in "O Brother Where Art Thou?") and a few years later Johnson in turn stole the senate election from Coke Stevenson.