#5

I finally finished my fifth book, which should count for, like, four whole books since it's well over 1000 pages: Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. It is the third book in a four-book series covering the life of Lyndon Johnson. I haven't read the first two (which were published many years ago), but I thought I'd start with this one since it won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer.

Focusing on LBJ's twelve years in the Senate, it is a truly phenomenal book. Political biographies can tend toward the dull side, but Caro makes it read like a novel. He spends many detailed pages--even full chapters--explaining and describing the history of the Senate and the life stories of important, relevant people like Richard Russell and Sam Rayburn and Emmett Till and Leland Olds. Caro also does a nice job by refraining from lionizing Johnson too much. I mean, you do get the feeling that Johnson is the greatest political genius--at least in the Senate--of this century, but you also realize he was a bigoted, misogyistic, bullying, self-centered asshole. As far as I could tell, he had pretty much no "principled" stands on anything and played everything toward his own ambition and power. That said, he accomplished some things pretty effectively even against the strong Southern racist bloc, including the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which laid the groundwork for later, better Acts. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book too broadly, but political junkies should devour it.