In sparkling detail, Caro shows the new president’s genius for getting to people — friends, foes and everyone in between — and how he used it to achieve his goals ... The other remarkable part of this volume covers the tribulation before the triumphs ... Caro paints a vivid picture of L.B.J.’s misery ... With this fascinating and meticulous account of how and why he did it, Robert Caro has once again done America a great service.
It is a searing account of ambition derailed by personal demons...It is a painful depiction of 'greatness comically humbled'...Most of all, it is a triumphant drama of 'political genius in action' ... Caro combines the skills of a historian, an investigative reporter and a novelist in this searching study of the transformative effect of power — its possession, its loss, its restoration — on the character and destiny of a man who from his teens had one overriding goal: to be president of the United States ... With each volume (a fifth is promised on Johnson’s final decade), the biography gains a cumulative richness that mostly justifies its length and Caro’s fondness for emphatic repetition, as well as frequent digressions into wonderful background material ... With his habitual clear-eyed assessment of a very flawed human being warmed by appreciation for that unexpected heroism, The Passage of Power quite possibly will stand as Robert Caro’s finest moment as well.
Caro is not exactly partial to verbal economy. His books are famous, or infamous, for running on profusely — not just because of the sheer mass of his research but also because of his overflowing literary style ... [I]f Caro’s personalities are multidimensional, they’re nonetheless overdrawn in a way that sows a nagging distrust. At any moment, he showcases only one element of Johnson (or of RFK, or of other characters); typically, it is a portrait of an extreme ... Like Johnson, Caro is capable of magnificence but inconsistent in its application, often wondrous to behold but also maddening ... The LBJ that Caro gives us is not an inaccurate portrait, but it’s certainly a subjective one — an idiosyncratic expression of Caro’s own sensibility ... There is both triumph and tragedy in the work of Caro. For all his prodigious research, painstaking reconstructions and carefully placed semicolons, he hasn’t given us a life of Johnson that will garner those verbal laurels 'authoritative' and 'definitive' that many biographers crave. But it is precisely because of Caro’s marvelously distinctive, proudly personalized method that he cannot give us such a work.
Caro has once again shown that he might well be the greatest presidential historian we've ever had ... Although the amount of research Caro has done for these books is staggering, it's his immense talent as a writer that has made his biography of Johnson one of America's most amazing literary achievements ... Even at more than 700 pages, there's not a wasted word, not a needless anecdote ... Caro's portrayal of the president is as scrupulously fair as it is passionate and deeply felt ... By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, he's forever changed the way we think, and read, American history.
This fourth volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson is much like its three prize-winning predecessors, detailed and riveting ... When it works, Caro’s prose style is wonderful; his alternating long and short sentences, his repeated phrases and quotations, make the book immediate and powerful. But when it does not work, Caro’s prose style is annoying, forcing the reader to go back, at the end of a hundred-word sentence, to remind himself of the subject ... There are passages in this book that, once read, will never leave the reader
Passage is a bit less satisfying than the earlier volumes. The bifurcated, set-piece-heavy structure makes for a messy narrative, and there’s a sense that Caro is mostly teeing up his grand finale...But this is an addictive read, written in glorious prose that suggests the world’s most diligent beat reporter channeling William Faulkner...an essential document of a turning point in American history.
With this fourth volume, The Passage of Power, [Caro's biography] leaps into non-fiction’s most heady mainstream, with a true story of huge personalities, bloody assassinations, loves, hatreds and betrayals (and the Kennedy family) that renders it by turns gripping, sensational and immensely depressing ... We will probably have to wait till around 2022 for Caro’s concluding volume of this magisterial series, but as he has shown four times already, and doubtless will a fifth: perfection takes time.
This slice of American history is well known. But with Caro's narration, it burns anew. In his writing, Caro does not merely recount. He beckons. Single sentences turn into winding, brimming paragraphs, clauses upon clauses tugging at the reader, layering the scenery with character intrigue and the plot with historical import. The result is irresistible ... The Passage of Power may be the most accessible of the bunch. More importantly, though, it covers with all the artistry and intrigue of a great novel events that are seared in the nation's memory ... Caro stands not merely apart, but alone.
...a terrific read. Caro paints palpable scenes and draws vivid characters ... But two things make this book less essential than the others. First, unlike the other volumes, the era it treads is hardly unpaved territory ... But my second problem is much more serious: Caro’s treatment of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis—and of the roles that Johnson and the Kennedy brothers (especially Robert Kennedy) played in the crisis—is, on several levels, simply wrong ... Caro left many pages—whole documents—unturned, unread, unopened. Either that, or (a more troubling and, my guess is, less likely possibility) he chopped and twisted the record to make it fit his narrative ... Caro’s analysis of LBJ’s hawkishness is misleading; his depiction of RFK’s dovishness is untrue.
The fourth volume of Robert Caro's towering LBJ biography is most fascinating not what it reveals about LBJ—but for the slow, grudging evolution of the author's feelings toward his monumental subject ... In The Passage of Power, [Caro has] come all the way around to damn near identifying with Johnson ... Caro's 35-years-and-counting project has always been rooted in emotionalism more than analysis: his shifting allegiances, his susceptibilities, his cloaked epiphanies ... Caro is all elaborate set-pieces, contrapuntal character studies, virtuoso compressions and expansions of chronology planned for maximum dramatic effect.
The fourth volume of Robert Caro's towering LBJ biography is most fascinating not what it reveals about LBJ—but for the slow, grudging evolution of the author's feelings toward his monumental subject ... In The Passage of Power, [Caro has] come all the way around to damn near identifying with Johnson ... Caro's 35-years-and-counting project has always been rooted in emotionalism more than analysis: his shifting allegiances, his susceptibilities, his cloaked epiphanies ... Caro is all elaborate set-pieces, contrapuntal character studies, virtuoso compressions and expansions of chronology planned for maximum dramatic effect.
Caro combines a compelling narrative and insightful authorial judgments into a lengthy volume that will thrill those who care about American politics, the foundations of power, or both ... A watershed in contemporary biography.
Caro’s penetrating study of competing power modes pits Kennedyesque charisma against Johnson’s brilliant parliamentary street-fighting, backroom arm-twisting, and canny manipulation of personal motives, all made vivid by rich profiles ... The author’s Shakespearean view of power...barely acknowledges the social movements that made possible Johnson’s legislative triumphs. But Caro’s ugly, tormented, heroic Johnson makes an apt embodiment of an America struggling toward epochal change.
Caro’s penetrating study of competing power modes pits Kennedyesque charisma against Johnson’s brilliant parliamentary street-fighting, backroom arm-twisting, and canny manipulation of personal motives, all made vivid by rich profiles ... The author’s Shakespearean view of power...barely acknowledges the social movements that made possible Johnson’s legislative triumphs. But Caro’s ugly, tormented, heroic Johnson makes an apt embodiment of an America struggling toward epochal change.
