Robert A. Caro

It’s so tempting to read Lyndon as an embodiment of the American century. For starters he’s so fundamentally weird; human only in outward form. The more I learn about America, especially after spending the last 8.5 years there, the weirder it seems, and the same goes for Lyndon. And he’s weird in many of the same ways America is weird. He obsesses about size, outcomes, ambition, and his idea of pleasure is sadomasochistic; he’s an unstinting flagellant of himself and others and is show more never satisfied. And in so many ways he embodies the progress of his country. He weaponises corporate money in politics. He buys up the airwaves and the press. He gives dictation while taking a dump, he feigns sleep if he can’t monopolize the conversation. As Caro notes, he’s someone who “creates politics”, who fosters the unsavoury conditions necessary for his own success.

Another weird thing about America are people’s names. Johnson is obviously not a weird name, although it’s a little odd that he comes from Johnson City. But the supporting cast more than compensate. It was delightful to spend time in the company of characters called Wingate Lucas, Carroll Keach, Everett Looney, Maury Maverick, Wright Patman, Polk Shelton, Clayton Stribling and Harfield Weedin. Pynchon would be proud. And “Path to Power” is as great and grotesquely American as anything by him. show less

Robert Caro's exhaustively researched 1974 Pulitzer prize-winning examination of the life and career of Robert Moses, who spent decades reshaping New York City by building parks, bridges, roads, and housing projects, and in the process acquired so much power that no one could stop him from doing basically whatever he wanted with the landscape of the city, even when they really should have.

Moses is a fascinating subject, and he comes across here as a man possessed of incredible drive and show more vision, with a real genius both for engineering works and political maneuvering, but also as a man utterly seduced by the love of power, blinded by his own arrogance, disturbingly ruthless, and deeply callous towards and contemptuous of the public he was meant to be serving -- a man who accomplished impressive things but also did massive amounts of damage to both individual people and the city as a whole.

Caro goes into all of it, good, bad, and complicated, in deep and specific detail. The resulting work is a hell of a tome: 1160 pages, not even counting the extensive end matter. It's not a quick read, either. It took me about three and a half weeks to finish it, and I don't think I've ever taken that long to finish a book, even one this length, in my entire life. Not when I was reading it straight through rather than picking it up intermittently, anyway. But even if it's far from zippy, it's surprisingly absorbing. Yes, there were parts where my attention waned, but far fewer than I'd have expected, given how very detailed it is, especially considering that I have no personal connection to, and only the vaguest familiarity with, NYC.

I think what really makes the book so engaging is that the story of Robert Moses ends up touching on so many big, broad, important topics far beyond the man himself, interesting as he was: the changing nature of cities over the course of the 20th century, the question of whether parks should exist primarily for the preservation of nature or for human recreation, the often devastating ways in which America has become utterly dominated by the car, the complex and disillusioning ways in which the business of government gets done, the outsized influence that individual personality quirks and petty feuds can have on the course of history, the pernicious ways in which racism and classism have shaped urban development, the corrupting influence of power, the extent to which public opinion is a product of the press, and the nature of human hubris.

Lots of food for thought here, in other words, and even though it ate up the better part of a month during which I otherwise might have read half a dozen other books, I am very glad I picked it up.

Also, immense props to Robert Caro, because I can barely imagine what a truly staggering amount of work must have gone into this. show less

FUCKING EXHAUSTING but I did it. IT is so difficult to spend so long with such an awful person, day in day out, lists of people he killed, lists of things he destroyed, lists of peoples lives ruined larger and longer than McCarthy, including his own brother and sister, countless interesting young people who could have done something interesting -- everything that I hate about New York is directly the result of this one person who ran New York based on his petty, racist, vile whims. I read show more the 23 page long rebuttal Robert Moses sent out on publication of this book -- and he doesn't deny anything! Calling Little Flower LaGuardia a racial slur? He meant it affectionately! His wife who became a sickly recluse who was unable to leave her home? So what if she is! Stole from his brother's trust and left him to die penniless and in a shoebox with no elevator because he didn't like that his brother wasn't a frothing racist? Won't even acknowledge he had a brother! I read this right after reading Aberration in the Heartland of the Real, a book about the same length, and also a biography -- about Timothy McVeigh. I would much rather spend the 67 hours I spent on this audiobook with Timothy McVeigh than spend another single second with Robert Moses, he is that terrible.

Great book, will never read it again, it's just too depressing. And there is no catharsis because this book would have been another 1,000 pages long if he had kept any of the part about Jane Jacobs, who finally dealt the killing blow to Robert Moses' ideology. But I kind of wish he would have included it, just so the readers could have some sense of triumph at the final vanquishing of this absolute terrible authoritarian racist sociopath. show less

This is Volume II of Caro's LBJ biography, and while it's a very good book, I did not find it as enthralling as I did Volume I. Its scope is much narrower, and as it reinforces many of the character flaws of LBJ that were exposed in Volume I some parts became a bit repetitious. Nevertheless, it is not a volume to be skipped--in my view all of the volumes should be read, and in order.

Means of Ascent focuses solely on two events: LBJ's acquisition and growth of his broadcasting empire (the show more source of his wealth), and the 1948 Senate election, which he won by 87 votes, leading to the nickname "Landslide Lyndon" which plagued him the rest of his life. Caro's meticulous detailing of the facts surrounding these events will leave any reader with no doubt that LBJ used his political power and influence, probably illegally, to acquire and build the broadcasting empire, and no doubt that LBJ stole the 1948 election.

LBJ maintained throughout his life that the initial radio station was Lady Bird's acquisition, and that she ran and expanded the business. He claimed to have played no part in securing the various FCC permits and waivers for this and any subsequent acquisitions and expansions. Caro methodically rebuts LBJ's claim, and shows the LBJ was always the driving force behind this enterprise, and that clear illegalities were involved. The detail and minutiae of LBJ's machinations as set forth by Caro are necessary to expose the truth, but can nonetheless lead to some tedious reading for a casual reader.

The events surrounding the 1948 election are perhaps more colorful, but no less detailed. Caro presents the 1948 election as one in which the old methods of campaigning gave way for the first time to campaigns in which the media began to play an all-important role. LBJ's broadcast empire allowed him to fully exploit the media, and made his run against a candidate previously thought to be unbeatable, the extremely popular ex-governor of Texas Coke Stevens, viable, since he was able to reach far many more voters than could Stevens. There is a lot of fascinating detail in Caro's blow-by-blow account of the campaign, including LBJ's use of the "new-fangled" helicopter, which as a novelty attracted hordes of voters whenever LBJ appeared, but which also, as a still experimental vehicle, put LBJ's life at risk more often than he was aware.

A large portion of this part of the book relates to the actual counting of the vote--the how, who and when of the stuffing of the ballot boxes, the coverup of these actions, the court battles, and so forth, including just how narrowly the LBJ faction escaped detection of the absolute proof of their fraud. The facts discovered and exposed by Caro leave no doubt that LBJ stole the election. Although LBJ never admitted to election fraud, the circumstances were such that the 1948 election remained a cloud over his head that emerged from time to time in his future career.

Caro devotes a fair amount of the book to LBJ's opponent Coke Stevens, who despite coming from a background similar to LBJ's was his polar opposite. The story of his poverty-stricken childhood, his years of self-education, and his amazing rise to power through small town lawyer, to D.A., to state representative, and ultimately to Texas governor makes for very good reading. Unlike LBJ, Coke was scrupulously honest, kind, considerate and well-loved. By the end of Means of Ascent, on the other hand, LBJ has become more and more dishonest, cruel and self-centered---a thoroughly unlikeable character. show less