Actually, yes, I have read that book from front to back. LBJ gets involved eventually. He does a lot of chest poking.

I read it. And I ain't so special.

The local library has it on CD. Next long road trip...

The local library has it on CD.

Not only does this mean someone's read it, it means someone's read it OUT LOUD.

(Or at least a still-substantial abridgement of it.)

I am waiting for LBJ for Dummies.

I did read it. Best book on Congress, ever. Highly recommended.

Michael Shilling has read it.

try again Josh. It's awesome. But maybe you should take on Vols. 1 and 2 first. Also awesome. Then, in 2008, report back to us on how it all went.

Yep, I've read it, too. Thought it read like a novel once LBJ hit the pages. Once he reached his power zenith, it did become more of a weighty tome. Still think Caro is brilliant writer and worth the effort.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. Read all of it three times.

Caro is a good writer and LBJ was a giant the likes of which we haven't seen since. But Caro also writes with a fairly conservative political agenda that minimizes LBJ's real contributions to American society as we know it today. Which weakens his utility.

Frankly, few books should be 1100 pages long. Life is too short.

I've read half of it and intend to read the second half. I've read the first two and they are the best introduction to american electoral and legislative politics, at least as practiced mid-century, that I know of. They are best approached in the summer or during an extended break, though. Caro is so painstaking in showing the full context of LBJ's machinations that you have to get up to speed on the picture he is drawing. I stopped reading MoS because a part of me--the part that never took an AfAm course in college--thought I should read Taylor Branch on MLK and civil rights before I finished this.

"The Path to Power" and "Means of Ascent" read like novels, fascinatingly full of detail and dish. One can scarcely imagine that Lady Bird put up with LBJ's outrageous shit all of those years. As Jackie once said of Lady Bird: if Lyndon had asked her, she'd have run naked down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. However, I've just looked at my "Master of the Senate" and find my bookmark on page xx of the Introduction. A fourth book is in the works and will detail why he finally accepted JFK's veep bid, ignominious as it seemed at the time. Caro also wrote a brilliant biography of Robert Moses, the architect of New York City.

4000+ pages on the life of LBJ is ridiculous....God doesn't deserve that long of biography....

and the Robert Moses book was a slog (ha!) too....too many words and too much detail is just as bad as too few words and too little detail..

and of course, I left out the 'a' before 'biography' so the ironing is delicious...

Yep. Read it. Though I thought you were going to pick on Caro's annoying habit of making his point over and over.

Still, the book eventually gets around to the passing of the first civil rights bill and makes for some interesting reading.

I can see skipping "Master Of The Senate" book but "Means of Ascent" is one of the best books on a campaign I have ever read.

It's an incredible book and a first-rate introduction to American politics. Yeah, it's long but the subject is worth it. The payoff is a detailed portrait of a master American politician at work.

Yes, LBJ was a shitbag, but he was also a genius at running and exploiting the political system (The first lesson of politics, he said, was that you have to know how to count ... Nancy Pelosi take note).

He did a lot of bad stuff but he also did much good. Only Johnson could have passed civil rights legislation, something he did in the late 1950s (that's the ultimate focus of this book) and again in the 1960s. No one had been able to get civil rights legislation past the Southern senators who controled the Senate since Reconstruction, but Johnson did it.

Read it and learn.

I read this book cover to cover about 2 years ago during the dead of winter, dead broke, no heat, no hot water heater and scrounging for change in my house to buy six packs of 16 ounce Keystone Ice's. Good times.

Carl

OMG Prospero. "Read it and learn" ?? Duh.
Stop lecturing us, please.
The reason I bought the book ($35) is cuz I wanted the ins and outs of the 1957 civil rights bill. Whatever, flavor flave condescension.