Master of the Senate

The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 1 of a 3-Part Recording)

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate.

A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years

At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.

It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.

Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.

Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.

Complete audio book cheaper on Google play

This is an amazing book I loved the first part but learned that you can get the performance uninterrupted of Google play for cheaper than the three parts here on audible. The 2* performance is entirely due to the way they broke it up. Two books I can see but a broken up chunk should be at least 20hrs.

So Deep Into It..All of It.

It is more detail than you know to even consider; yet each Chapter, each seemingly digression proves necessary to understand the story.
I really enjoyed the minibiographies on Senators that were critical to Johnsons swift progress in the Senate.
I grew to dislike Johnson in the first book. At times in this one was so disgusted with his use of others I had to stop and find another topic of reading for a day or two. But like any car wreck or disaster, I had to return to see the rest...and already downloaded the next volume.

Very insightful

Very insightful book about the lengths people can go to cultivate relationships and acquire power.

Gripping! At times so affective

Frequently affected me so much I had to stop listening. Caro is a master story teller, painting characters so well that one gets incensed my their treatment. Can’t wait for the next LBJ book. Have read three so far. Dazzling masterful works!

A must for the politics tragics!

As an Aussie, I knew very little about LBJ but I had heard these Caro books were brilliant. How right that is. I particularly appreciated the depth of the background in the history and working of the US senate and Caro's portrayal of this complex and flawed man is unflinching and compelling. I highly recommend it for anyone, but for any politics tragic, it's an absolute must. Seven stars.