Caro turned 77 in October, however, and has been requiring more time to account for his subject's life, which is understandable since it grew increasingly complex and consequential. If Caro levels off at his current pace, taking two years of research and writing to chronicle one year of Johnson's life, it will be another two decades before Caro publishes the volume that takes Johnson through his presidency-that is, through the 1964 election, the Great Society, Vietnam, the 1968 election-and into retirement as a former president. The Passage of Power, published last year, covers the period from 1958 to early 1964: ten years from Caro five years of Johnson.ĭevoted readers of this biography can take little encouragement from the actuarial tables. Master of the Senate, published in 2002, spans the first ten years of Johnson's career as a senator and Senate Democratic leader. It covers seven years, culminating in Johnson's election to the Senate in 1948 (widely suspected but not proven to have been stolen until Caro uncovered clear documentary evidence). Instead, Caro's first volume, The Path to Power, appeared in 1982-eight years of his life spent recounting the first 33 years of Johnson's. He meant The Years of Lyndon Johnson to be a six-year, three-volume project. Caro began working on a biography of Lyndon Johnson in 1974, the year he published his award-winning The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. A review of The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A.
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