Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)

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Inย Means of Ascent,ย Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro brings alive Lyndon Johnson in his wilderness years.
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In Means of Ascent, Lyndon Johnsonโ€™s almost mythic personalityโ€”part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculatingโ€”is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his 1941 campaign for the Senate-the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut-through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it).
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The culminating dramaโ€”the explosive heart of the bookโ€”is Caroโ€™s illumination, based on extraordinarily detailed investigation, of one of the great political mysteries of the century. Having immersed himself in Johnsonโ€™s life and world, Caro is able to reveal the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson was not believed capable of winning, which he โ€œhad toโ€ win or face certain political death, and which he did win-by 87 votes, the โ€œ87 votes that changed history.โ€
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Telling that epic story โ€œin riveting and eye-opening detail,โ€ Caro returns to the American consciousness a magnificent lost hero. He focuses closely not only on Johnson, whom we see harnessing every last particle of his strategic brilliance and energy, but on Johnsonโ€™s โ€œunbeatableโ€ opponent, the beloved former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, who embodied in his own life the myth of the cowboy knight and was himself a legend for his unfaltering integrity. And ultimately, as the political duel between the two men quickensโ€”carrying with it all the confrontational and moral drama of the perfect Westernโ€”Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the newโ€”the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.

Means of Ascent was first published on March 6, 1991.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The second installment in a projected four-volume biography of LBJ that opened with The Path to PowerMeans of Ascent shines a harsh light on the early political years of one of America’s most paradoxical presidents. The man who would later ram civil rights legislation through a reluctant Congress, and then be brought down by Vietnam, came out of a political swamp–Caro gives a graphic picture of the Texas democratic political machine at its most corrupt. The climax of the book is LBJ’s election to the Senate in 1948, an election he won by 87 dubious votes out of almost a million. That vote arguably changed history. This book won the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Review

“Thrilling. Caro burns into the reader’s imagination the story of the [1948 Senate] election. Never has it been told so dramatically, with breathtaking detail piled on incredible development . . . In The Path to Power, Volume I of his monumental biography, Robert A. Caro ignited a blowtorch whose bright flame illuminated Johnson’s early career. In Means of Ascent he intensifies the flame to a brilliant blue point.” โ€”Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

“Brilliant. No brief review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.” โ€”Henry F. Graff, Professor of History, Columbia University

“Caro has a unique place among American political biographers. He has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured. Caro’s diligence [and] ambition are phenomenal . . . A remarkable story . . . Epic.” โ€”Mark Feeney, Boston Sunday Globe

“Immensely engrossing . . . Caro is an indefatigable investigative reporter and a skillful historian who can make the most abstract material come vibrantly to life. [He has a] marvelous ability to tell a story . . . His analysis of how power is usedโ€”to build highways and dams, to win elections, to get richโ€”is masterly.” โ€”Ronald Steel, The New York Times Book Review

“Caro has changed the art of political biography.” โ€”Nicholas von Hoffman

“A spellbinding, hypnotic journey into the political life and times of Lyndon Johnson. Riveting drama.” โ€”Jim Finley, Los Angeles Times

“The most compelling study of American political power and corruption since Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men . . . It is nothing less than a political epic, the definitive account of a watershed election, rich with all of the intrigue and drama that have become the stuff of legend. [It has] the suspense of a political thriller.” โ€”Steve Neal, Fort Worth Star Telegram

“Magnificent . . . Thunder and lightning rip through Mr. Caro’s viscerally compelling work.” โ€”Thomas W. Hazlett, The Wall Street Journal

“A brilliant but disturbing book . . . A devastating study that warrants the broadest readership. He reminds us that Americans need to be vigilant in upholding their highest standards of ethics and good government.” โ€”Guy Halverson, The Chistian Science Monitor

“His research is dazzlingly exhaustive, his gripping story is enhanced by excellent writing, and his findings [seem] largely irrefutable. No one has done a better job of researching [the 1948 race] than Mr. Caro. He has produced a portrait not only of Lyndon Johnson, but also of the politics and values of mid-century America.” โ€”Philip Seib, Dallas Morning News

“Robert Caro gives us an LBJ who was human and then some, and what’s enthralling is how this lucid, fascinating book keeps forcing us to confront the extreme contradictions of what (on good days) we call human nature. It’s a testament to Robert Caro’s skill that we find it so difficult to get a firm moral fix on Johnson. Caro is that rare biographer who seems intrigued by his subject but happily free from the urge to either heroicize, psychologizeโ€”or excoriate and punish.” โ€”Francine Prose, 7 Days

Means of Ascent is a political biography, a detective story, a western and a character study. Above all, it is a richly textured, multilayered chronicle of a fundamental social and political change and how this change highlighted elements of Mr. Johnson’s character: his powerful needs, tremendous ambition and particular genius.” โ€”Robert A. Kronley, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“One can trust every detail. The sagaciousness and discretion of Caro’s investigations are obvious from the start. The story of that election has all the excitement of a murder mystery in which the culprit is known, but the question is whether justice will triumph. Caro tells it with the same thriller instinct as the old novelists, yet with the passion for accuracy of the most exacting detective.” โ€”Denis Wadley, Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune

“A great book, and I believe the completed biography will be the great book about American politics in the twentieth century. The story of the ’48 election is remarkable, unique. If it weren’t a cliche, I’d say it has Tolstoyan epic grandeur.” โ€”Robert K. Massie

“Riveting . . . Explosive . . . Readers are in for a white-knuckle, hair-raising tale that could have ended in any of a dozen ways, with L.B.J. in the White House the longest shot of all. This is good history. Caro’s treatment achieves poetic intensity.” โ€”Paul Gray, Time

“Caro’s writing summons a reviewer’s clichesโ€”gripping, compelling, absorbing, irresistible . . . unputdownable. The sentences sparkle. The details pile up in a mountain of evidence . . . Caro has at last set the record straight.” โ€”Richard Marius, Harvard Magazine

“Extraordinary and brilliant . . . Devastatingly persuasive . . . Caro’s prodigious research, and his discovery of original sources ignored by other biographers, proves beyond doubt that much of what Johnson said about these years was false . . . The spadework combined with Caro’s passion makes for drama more riveting than any novel.” โ€”Mark A. Gamin, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Caro is the premier biographer of our time.” โ€”Bernard D. Nossiter, The Progressive

“No one understands Lyndon Baines Johnson without reading Robert A. Caro.” โ€”James F. Vesely, Sacramento Union

From the Inside Flap

Robert A. Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the greatly acclaimed The Path to Power, also winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, continues — one of the richest, most intensive and most revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American President. In Means of Ascent the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer/historian, chronicler also of Robert Moses in The Power Broker, carries Johnson through his service in World War II and the foundation of his long-concealed fortune and the facts behind the myths he created about it. But the explosive heart of the book is Caro’s revelation of the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for forty years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson had to win or face certain political death, and which he did win — by “the 87 votes that changed history.” Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new — the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.

From the Back Cover

Robert A. Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the greatly acclaimed The Path to Power, also winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, continues — one of the richest, most intensive and most revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American President. In Means of Ascent the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer/historian, chronicler also of Robert Moses in The Power Broker, carries Johnson through his service in World War II and the foundation of his long-concealed fortune and the facts behind the myths he created about it. But the explosive heart of the book is Caro’s revelation of the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for forty years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson had to win or face certain political death, and which he did win — by “the 87 votes that changed history.” Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new — the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.

About the Author

For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, has three times won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best โ€œexemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.โ€ In 2010 President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal, stating at the time: โ€œI think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized, and Iโ€™m sure it helped to shape how I think about politics.โ€ In 2016 he received the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. The London Sunday Times has said that Caro is โ€œThe greatest political biographer of our times.โ€  

Caroโ€™s first book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, everywhere acclaimed as a modern classic, was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. It is, according to David Halberstam, โ€œSurely the greatest book ever written about a city.โ€ And The New York Times Book Review said: โ€œIn the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort.โ€ 

The first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, was cited by The Washington Post as โ€œproof that we live in a great age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caroโ€™s evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnsonโ€™s unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually work, areโ€”let it be said flat outโ€”at the summit of American historical writing.โ€ Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia University called the second volume, Means of Ascent, โ€œbrilliant. No review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.โ€ The London Times hailed volume three, Master of the Senate, as โ€œa masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age.โ€ The Passage of Power, volume four, has been called โ€œShakespearean . . . A breathtakingly dramatic story [told] with consummate artistry and ardorโ€ (The New York Times) and โ€œas absorbing as a political thriller . . . By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think about, and read, American historyโ€ (NPR). On the cover of The New York Times Book Review, President Bill Clinton praised it as โ€œBrilliant . . . Important . . . Remarkable. With this fascinating and meticulous account Robert Caro has once again done America a great service.โ€ 

โ€œCaro has a unique place among American political biographers,โ€ The Boston Globe said . . . โ€œHe has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured.โ€ And Nicholas von Hoffman wrote: โ€œCaro has changed the art of political biography.โ€

Born and raised in New York City, Caro graduated from Princeton University, was later a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and worked for six years as an investigative reporter for Newsday. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ina, the historian and writer.

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