| Front Cover |
Book Details |
|
| Genre |
Biography; Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973; Presidents - United States - Biography; Texas - Politics And Government - 1865-1950; United States - Politics And Government - 1933-1945 |
| Publication Date |
11/12/1982 |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Publisher |
Alfred A. Knopf |
| Language |
English |
|
|
| Personal Details |
| Store |
AbeBooks |
| Purchase Price |
$8.17 |
| Acquire Date |
6/20/2019 |
| Condition |
Good/-- |
| Rating |
0 |
| Links |
Library of Congress
|
|
| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
E847 .C34 1982 vol. 1 |
| Dewey |
973.923092 |
| ISBN |
0394499735 |
| Series |
The Years of Lyndon Johnson |
| Volume |
1 |
| No. of Pages |
882 |
| First Edition |
No |
| Rare |
No |
|
| Notes/Review |
Working my way through whole-life biographies of American presidents, I finally get to one that was in office when I was a child. I certainly didn't have any real opinion of Johnson at the time, but did form an impression of him later. That opinion was based entirely on his time as president. Beginning with the first of Caro's books about him, we take that opinion apart and rebuild it based on a greater understanding of the man.
I'm reading Caro hoping that he will complete his final book by the time I read those already published. It took me a more than month to knock this one off, and I have no intention of reading them back-to-back-to-back, so it remains a possibility.
In reading these presidential biographies, if you go back and read my other reviews, it's important to me that the author place his subject fully in the context of the times. That may be less important to me as we get into the times that I lived through, but for men who were presidents in history rather than memory it's important that events in the greater world are explained well enough that I can make sense of a president's actions. How can I get a sense of a president's impact, good or bad, if I don't understand what was happening around him?
For this first volume, at least, Caro does a fantastic job of placing Johnson in context. I will illustrate with just one example: rural electrification. Caro gives a bit of history of rural electrification in general, and shows us how the problems faced generally are similar or different than the problem in electrifying the Hill Country. He gives us a whole chapter on life there without electricity: just what is involved in doing laundry. His thoroughness here is repeated for other issues as well. What were the economic issues of the day? Who were the major figures in Johnson's career. Not just who they were, but little biographies of them, too.
All this context makes for a long book (and this first volume takes us only to Pearl Harbor). But the book isn't long just due to context. Nearly everything Caro tells us about Johnson is built up from several sources and Johnson's methods and actions are illustrated with repetition.
I anticipate the rest of the series will continue with this richness of context and detail.
The book presents many philosophical questions to me. Do ends justify means? Can an ambitious person leverage a corrupt system to do good? How can we have a functioning democracy given the corrupting influence of money? Can a seriously flawed person (whether corrupt, ambitious, opaque, apparently lacking a moral center, etc.) be a great leader? |
|