Reviews - Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II

194 reviews for:

Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II

a phenomenal account of lyndon johnson’s theft of the 1948 senate election, setting the stage for his rise to the presidency 15 years later. caro’s prose is miles better than other biographies and the painstaking research is evident throughout. it does venerate lbj’s opponent to contrast his honesty with johnson’s lack of it, but the policies he supported are evident throughout (he had ‘conservative’ on his gravestone for a reason)

it shows the election as one which forever changed Texan politics but also as one which marked a sea change in the way in which political campaigns were ran (like using a helicopter!!) it also shows johnson as a conniving genius, traits which were put to both good and horrendous use during his presidency; as the brilliant introduction points out, the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the horrors of Vietnam were both spearheaded by johnson. without the fraud here, who knows how us politics would look?

100/100

freibs's review

4.5

informative medium-paced

yorickdupon's review against another edition

4.5

informative tense slow-paced

ontheridge's review

5.0

Very good!

jacob_mcg's review

4.0

challenging dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

Following up the Path to Power is a hard task, but Caro nearly pulls it off. I have 2 major thoughts about this book. The first is that Caro absolutely nails the heist feeling of LBJ’s camp stealing the 1948 Texas Senate Election. Jumping between the Texas Mexico Border, Austin, DFW, and eventually DC makes the back half of the book feel like a Safdie movie. The second is that Caro’s hagiography of Stevenson keeps this book from being perfect. Although Johnson stealing the election was a miscarriage of justice, Caro underplays Stevenson reactionary politics, such as failing to push for prosecution of white men who lynched a black man. This underplay makes Caro’s claims that Stevenson was hurt by the weaponization of the law by Johnson seem hollow, as he experienced the same lack of protection from the lack that black people experience under his administration. This is even more stark since Caro starts the boom talking about the twin threads of Johnson’s history, the corruption and self enrichment with the use of political power to help the underserved. The fact that this dynamic was not explored is very disappointing.