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I've been listening (for the umpteenth time) to the C-SPAN interview of Robert Caro (by Brian Lamb). Robert Caro is the author of an enormously detailed history of the life and career of Lyndon Johnson. Also for the umpteenth time, I listened to this exchange between Brian Lamb (BL) and Robert Caro (RC) concerning the "Box 13 Scandal," which was Johnson's stepping stone to the United States Senate. This exchange begins about 27 minutes, 30 seconds (27:30) into the video linked above. BL: You have a chapter in this book devoted to his wife, and someone who is still alive…...

A publishing event: the fourth volume in Robert Caro's monumental biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the best-selling and prize-winning The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and Master of the Senate. The Passage of Power follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career. It tells the story of his volatile relationship with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy during the fight they waged for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president and through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency. It gives us for the first time the story of the assassination from the...

Amazon.com Robert Caro's Master of the Senate examines in meticulous detail Lyndon Johnson's career in that body, from his arrival in 1950 (after 12 years in the House of Representatives) until his election as JFK's vice president in 1960. This, the third of a projected four-volume series, studies not only the pragmatic, ruthless, ambitious Johnson, who wielded influence with both consummate skill and "raw, elemental brutality," but also the Senate itself, which Caro describes (pre-1957) as a "cruel joke" and an "impregnable stronghold" against social change. The milestone of Johnson's Senate years was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, whose passage...