The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Caro continues to overwrite, but his obsessive love of detail not surprisingly makes for a fine-grained story, a mark of great history writing and sufficient payoff for those who have the patience to slog through it all. In this volume he also seems to moderate the distaste for his subject that has been evident throughout the biography. This covers the period, after all, where Johnson built a foundation of greatness as he rose above his predecessor’s accomplishments by passing the first strong civil rights law since Reconstruction and launching the war on poverty. I’m guessing the sympathy will wear thin as the Vietnam War escalates, but at least Caro is framing the story as tragedy.