Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his 12 years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.

Caro demonstrates how Johnson's political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust - or at least the cooperation - of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. And we hear him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights.

Robert A. Caro has won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, as well as two National Book Critics Circle Awards and other honors. Master of the Senate is told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro's peerless research.

Listening Length

8 hours and 33 minutes
Author

Robert A. Caro
Narrator

Stephen Lang
Audible release date

April 19, 2002
Language

English
Publisher

Random House Audio
ASIN

B000066IHH
Version

Abridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	8 hours and 33 minutes
Author	Robert A. Caro
Narrator	Stephen Lang
Audible.com Release Date	April 19, 2002
Publisher	Random House Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Abridged
Language	English
ASIN	B000066IHH
Best Sellers Rank	#31,788 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #96 in Political Science History & Theory #127 in Biographies of Presidents & Heads of State (Audible Books & Originals) #172 in Historical Biographies (Audible Books & Originals)

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Clem

Caro is still going strong

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 14, 2013

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The series of books by Robert Caro that detail the life of the 36th president Lyndon B. Johnson have become a bit of legend in the last 30 years. Apparently, Caro set out to write a 2 volume set detailing the man's life, yet apparently the words flowed a bit too easily, and as of this writing, he's working on the fifth, and hopefully the last, installment. Add to the fact that his research into his subject is so frighteningly intense, that it takes Robert Caro an average of ten years between these works. This particular one, the third, came out back in 2002. I didn't think it was quite as good as the first two, but I would still give this one an A+.

When viewing these volumes, it's quite easy to become intimidated by the shear volume of these books, and to immediately turn away towards lighter reading. These volumes average about 800 pages (this one is over 1,000) and the pages are dense with information. Fortunately, the writing is first class, and despite the time and effort in reading such burly volumes, the reader rarely gets bored. The books are simply chocked full of wonderful information.

Caro's first volume deals with LBJ's birth through his election to the House of Representatives in 1942. The second one leads up to his victory (although the election was blatantly stolen) to the Senate in 1950, and this one details his life a senator during the decade of the fifties until his vice-presidential nomination in 1960. The description in the title "Master" is no misnomer. The man was clearly a dominate force during his years as leader of the Senate and, as this book describes in detail, had just sort of personality that managed to radically shake up (for the better) the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

Throughout all of Caro's volumes, he paints a very fair picture of the (then) future president. He doesn't regard him as a saint nor a god, yet he isn't a hater of the man, and there's no blatant vitriol towards the man. LBJ comes across as someone with many strengths and many weaknesses just like everyone else, and with the extensive research, we see broad examples of both. One thing Johnson was addicted to was a lust for immense power (2 of the 4 volumes have the word "power" in the title), and being as smart as he was, he knew how to yield it to get what he wanted, and to get it quickly.

It's obvious from early on in the first volume, that Johnson's ultimate quest is no less than President of the United States. Everything he does in his whole life is simply a stepping stone to reach that goal. Including being the most powerful man in the Senate. The fact that LBJ radically changed the way the Senate operated is detailed exclusively. Up until Johnson's time, the U.S. Senate had been mainly a place for complacent "old bulls" to retain their status quo, and were never concerned much with helping the ordinary citizen, especially if it meant radically sacrificing their social status. The U.S. Senate was basically a fraternity, and until the man (and yes, it was only men - only white men at that time remember) had seniority, he was expected to sit quietly and be submissive to the elder members. Caro even spends the first 100 pages or so of this volume detailing a brief history of the Senate - back to the founding fathers, to illustrate this point. Some readers have found that too much of a distraction, but it helps clearly illustrated just how the environment had been for close to 200 years.

This isn't to say LBJ was a saint who was a crusader for the common man. No, he understood politics, and knew what was necessary to retain support from the rich boys and stay in office. Sadly, just like now, retaining one's title as "Senator" was still the main focus, and every bit of legislation was looked at as how it would effect the Senator before how it would affect the constituents back home. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than the Civil Rights issues that were predominantly being talked about during the 1950s. In fact, about half of this book is devoted the details surrounding Civil Rights, and this is the only area where Caro gets a bit bogged down in his details when he describes, in too meticulous detail, every single vote, every single action, and every single interaction between the key players during this time.

Although Lyndon Johnson is the President mostly noted for advancing Civll Rights once be became president, we have to really wonder just how committed he was to the cause. Was he truly trying to stand up for those who were worse off due to the color of their skin? Or was he just trying to move his own career as much and as far as possible? After reading the third installment of the Caro books, you have to honestly believe that it really was a bit of both. Sadly, the book goes into a lot of detail about how difficult such legislation would be to pass in the deep segregated South of only fifty years ago. Even if Johnson really was passionate about the cause, there were too many old white men in office who worked diligently to keep the races segregated.

To sum up what the book illustrates in several hundred pages, Johnson realizes that if he's ever going to be President, he needs to pass a Civil Rights bill in the Senate. With all of the animosity and wheeling and dealing, he does manage to pass such a bill in 1957, yet it's so watered down and inconsequential, that those who knew better (i.e. key members of the NAACP) realized that it was all fluff and no substance so they were actually repulsed by such an "equality" bill. Then, of course, the deep south were also aggravated since many of their voters were appalled by the thought of such a simple gesture. So all of this to say that LBJ had a lot of "politicking" to do, and as the book details, he did it quite well.

One of the best things about Caro's writing (although there are a few who think exactly the opposite), is that before he introduces key people who would play a part in Lyndon Johnson's life, he would devote entire chapters to the individuals. He wants the reader to feel they really understand these individuals in as much detail as possible. There are times when you forget you're reading about Johnson since you become so immersed in page after page of these other individuals. Yet Caro's attention to detail never loses the reader, and you end up being glad that he goes off on these tangents even though they briefly take us away from the main character. I confess I had never heard of people such as Leland Olds or Dick Russell before I read this book, and yet I feel incredibly enriched now that I do. There are also other key players that I may have briefly heard of before, such as Hubert Humphrey or John Connally, that my appetite has now been sufficiently whetted to where I can't wait to learn more about some of history's key figures.

Another consideration, which could be could considered either an asset or a liability, is that Caro makes an effort to have these different volumes "stand alone". In other words, you don't necessarily need to read the volumes together nor in sequential order. To accomplish this, he'll sometimes repeat the same details from book to book. So whereas he might devote 30-45 pages in the first volume detailing how LBJ brought electricity to the rural hill country of Texas in the 1930's, he'll repeat the same details here albeit limiting the page space to only 2 or 3. Therefore, if you do read these books sequentially, it's easy to fall into the trap of feeling the author is being a bit repetitive. Then, though, we must remember that, as stated before, these books were released about a decade apart, so perhaps a brief refresher is also in order for those who have been away from the story for a bit.

The fourth volume (which I'm currently reading as I write this) was released a full ten years after this one (released in 2012), and although devotees were hoping Robert Caro would finish up the story in this fourth release, the author doesn't even come close. The fourth volume concludes (I'm told) shortly after LBJ assumes the presidency. The fifth volume (which he's currently working on) will detail the mean years of the presidency including Viet Nam. We can hope that that one will be the last. Truth be told, though, these books are so engrossing, that I wouldn't mind several more volumes. Time, though, would seem to prevent that as the author, who started writing this in his forties, his now entering his seventh decade.

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P. I. Marder

Perhaps 'character study' is the best description, and it may be that it's in ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 13, 2015

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Master of the Senate is a quite valuable and often entertaining account of LBJ's tenure as US Senate majority leader. But at over 1000 pages of length, I believe it could have been trimmed considerably and gain much more in readability and coherence than it would have lost in completeness; in other words, Alfred Knopf publishers should have wielded the editor's pencil with a bit more temerity. Is Mr. Caro attempting to write literature or history? I'm not certain he really knows, and often the narrative is an uneasy amalgam of both--too stylized in some parts, not rigorous enough in others. Perhaps 'character study' is the best description, and it may be that it's in describing with pitiless detail the supremely selfish and ruthless Lyndon Johnson, that Caro makes the greatest contribution: seldom have I encountered a more naked, repellent portrait of single-minded thirst for power as the one the author brilliantly compiles. Caro also does a very good job of taking the reader inside the tactical and strategic workings of passing or obstructing legislation in the senate, the cynical back-room deal-making, even threatening at which LBJ excelled Morality, friendship, legality, the lives or reputations of others, family, wife, children, even his own health--even, or especially, this little thing called 'truth', nothing stood in the way of LBJ's pursuit of power. And not even America, because LBJ pursued his own agenda of advancement, even to the detriment of the nation he supposedly served. Now, having done great service in immortalizing a monster of egotism, this is where Caro, in my opinion, fails to consummate the conclusion he had inexorably brought his readers to: that LBJ was an SOB, and that if an SOB can thrive in the US political system then, ipso facto, this has to mean that something is fundamentally very, very wrong in Washington DC, not just in the personalities and the parties, but in the architecture of political power as practiced under the Capitol Dome (and in the lobbyist's hotel suites) itself. Did Caro, as Bob Woodward, as he wrote exposes of the government, get too close to the subject, the establishment, and, to some extent, become co-opted by it, skewing his conclusions, if only unconsciously? Caro suggests that, yes, well LBJ, was an SOB, but hell, only an SOB could have engineered such legislative triumphs as the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (according to Caro, the first successful civil rights legislation passed for 85 years), and, later of course, the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Caro seems to be on solid ground in this contention; after all, isn't this the consensus, that surprisingly, the conservative Texan ends up being the 'savior' of Black folk in America. Caro basically says that if not for LBJ's ingenious maneuvering, civil rights would not have progressed, and that, sure, he gutted the 1957 bill of much substance, but still, he got things moving. I'm not so sure of this, of the 'Great Men' of History theory, that if LBJ had succumbed to his big heart attack in 1955, there would have been no progress, that he was instrumental. The injustice done to Black people was real, it was bad, and with TV, and the rise of Black voting constituencies in the North (which Caro does allude to), something HAD to happen, and it would have happened with LBJ, or without him, and, potentially, it would have been even more meaningful. Is social and political change something conceded and directed from above, or does it issue from the people themselves? If the Southern Caucus under Russell had continued filibustering and obstructing, the pressure would probably have only gotten greater and greater, the clashes more frequent, more intense, the publicity more damaging. LBJ, by dampening the process (as Caro documents, not for the good of America, let alone for the good of Black people, but for the good of his consuming lust for the Presidency, to which patching together a North-South Democratic compromise was key) did hasten passage of a nominal civil rights bill, but this arguably hindered rather than helped civil rights, and ultimately, the United States as well, because the blight of institutionalized racism weakens the whole country by consigning millions of our people to a 'less than human status' and diminishes the contributions they can make to our society. Is this a stylistic device also, the seeming paradox that this villain, in the end, did something virtuous? I wonder; in the previous volume, Means of Ascent, it seemed that Caro had similarly created and accentuated a dramatic contrast between Coke Stevenson and LBJ in the 1948 Texas US Senate election; is something similar going on here; the darkness of LBJ's compulsive drive for power, relieved by the light of an ultimate redemption via his championing of civil rights, a happy ending of sorts?
A quick note on some small matters of detail: on page 1027, Caro, writing about the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, by the USSR, writes: "The launchings showed that the Russians had indeed developed rockets with more thrust than America's, but it was not thrust but rather the rocket's accuracy and the destructive power of the nuclear warheads they carried that would count in war." Well, the last bit, to me doesn't make sense: the destructive power of a nuclear warhead (especially in those early days) depended on the amount of fissile material it carried, and whether it was a fission (A) or fission-fusion (H) device, meaning the total energy of the explosion does ultimately hinge on how much uranium and plutonium is in the device, and YES, this means thrust does matter, because the more your rocket can lift, the bigger, or the more numerous, your warheads can be. On the same page, Caro also writes: "Quite sure of these facts (the USA's nuclear weapon superiority vis a vis the USSR) in part because of amazingly detailed photographic evidence from U-2s, supersonic reconnaissance aircraft that overflew the USSR at heights of up to 15,000 feet (sic)." This couldn't be a simple typo, inverting 15,000, rather than 51,000, it seems to be just plain bad proofreading or 'proof thinking', because military aircraft were already reaching heights in excess of 20,000 during the later stages of the 1914-1918 war. And finally: based on the copious, copious anecdotes--many of them not from enemies of LBJ, but his friends and associates-- in this book, and in Means of Ascent, there can be little doubt that Lyndon Baines Johnson would have been perfectly capable of crimes, and even of being associated in a murder, if such crime(s) would have brought him the power he desired above ALL else, so yes, LBJ, judging from Caro's very thorough character study, could have been a party to a plot to assassinate JFK. I am not saying that LBJ was complicit in such a conspiracy, just that it appears that he would have been morally capable of it.

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diawoods

I can't say enough how good this book is!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2023

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This book is just awesome. Hard to believe anyone could produce something this detailed, this researched, this informative and interesting. It is long, but it is worth every minute spent reading it. The world is indebted beyond words to Robert Caro for his twelve years of diligent work to writ this book. In addition, his writing skill is a delight to read.

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Mark Pack

As brilliant and enjoyable as it is long

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 22, 2017

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It's hardly breaking or surprising news to say that Robert Caro's Master of the Senate, a volume of biography covering Lyndon Johnson's time as Majority Leader of the US Senate, is as brilliant and enjoyable as it is long.

But two particular points may be worth highlighting for anyone else interested in politics who hasn't yet read it, and is perhaps even put off by the thought of finding the time for its 1,000 plus pages.

One is that this volume isn't simply a biography of a slice of Lyndon Johnson's career, it's also a scintillating history of the US Senate and the way in which power and formal political rules interact. Included in that is a warning of the fallibility of long-term political forecasts with its account of the years when it looked like the Republicans could become the political voice of the African American community propelled in no small part by Richard Nixon.

The second is that an audio version is available - suitable, for example, for listening to when out delivering contemporary political leaflets. Not just available but brilliantly narrated by Grover Gardner. Both author and narrator are lucky to have the other as such a skilled part-creator of the audio book.

10 people found this helpful

William Jordan

excellent if very long history of Lyndon Johnson, the Senate, Civil Rights and related issues

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 9, 2013

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This third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B Johnson is of the same extremely high standard as its predecessors and its successor. It's really impossible to overpraise the quality of the research and understanding, and its great readability.

At 1040 pages, the book is very long indeed. It covers the history of the Senate itself (its role to moderate both the President/Executive and the potential populism of the House of Representatives; its great moments - and its failures in the past) as well as the years from 1950 when Johnson was a senator. Much of the final section of the book also covers at some length the civil rights movement of the 1950s before launching into Johnson's extremely determine and creative handling of it in the Senate in 1957. There is also drama, with Johnson's heart attack and his response to it. And deep analysis of Johnson's character - sympathy for the underdog yes, but always subordinate to the quest for power. We get a very clear sense both of the great good Johnson could do in the world; and of the harm.

Having now read all four volumes of this biography to appear to date, I cannot wait for volume 5!

5 people found this helpful

R A Zambardino

The Senate and Lyndon Johnson

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 13, 2012

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This book by Robert Caro is a fascinating and necessary reading for anybody really interested in American politics. It is far more than a biography of the Senate years of Lyndon B Johonson: it is also a clear and detailed history of the Senate from its beginning to 1960, and of the American political scene, particularly with reference to Civil Rights in the 1950s. It may come as a surprise to see the complete domination by the southern senators, through the seniority and the filibuster rules, which stopped progressive legislation even reaching the floor, to be voted. Even Roosvelt, after 1936, did not manage to have any internal policy measure approved, and almost the same applied to Truman. The way LBJ managed, within a few years, to circumvent seniority and gradually become the powerful master of the Senate is the work of a real political genius and Caro's narrative is truly fascinating. However Caro does not let his admiration for LBJ to pass over the negative aspects of his personality: his vulgar side (down to forcing his assistants to conduct business with him while sitting on the WC!), his actions as a bully with his assistants and his wife are fully covered.Similarly, his unpleasant political actions, particularly the McCarthy-like undoing of the Federal Power Commissdion chairman Aldos, are fully detailed.
In the end, LBJ emerges as a bigger than life figure, a political genius, with genuine sense of Compassion and with immense Ambition. As Caro sums it up, if and when the two came into conflict Ambition won. This is truly one of the best books on USA politics.

8 people found this helpful

Christopher Jong

An excellent insight into Lyndon Johnson's Time in the Senate

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 18, 2021

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As William Hague once nominated Means of Ascent as the book he would most like to have with him on a Desert Island, I would personally nominate Master of the Senate as the book I would like to have with me if I were to be stranded somewhere in the Pacific. It is a masterful and exhaustive tome that is never Dull, written by an excellent author whose talent is unrivalled.

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CVAR

best political biography there is

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 18, 2018

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Not much to add here from the other reviews, an absolute masterpiece. One of the, if not the, best political biography there is.

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