The Passage of Power
2012 · book
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZE NAMED BY THE NEW YORK TIMESONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist * Time * Newsweek * Foreign Policy * Business Week * The Week * The Christian Science Monitor *Newsday By the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker. Book Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnsondisplays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Timesof London to acclaim it as "one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece." The Passage of Powerfollows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career--1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin's bullet to reach its mark. By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro