Yet Caro has always been rather vague about what, exactly, power is. For Caro, Johnson is thus the perfect subject: a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of power. Readers who have followed Caro's work, beginning with The Power Broker, his biography of the grandiose New York City urban planner Robert Moses, have been repeatedly reminded that power is his primary concern. Kennedy was killed and Johnson ascended to the Oval Office. Caro lingers on every embarrassment of the vice presidency, a period of humiliation for Johnson that ended only when President John F. Senate during the 1950s, then follows him as he crashes to earth as vice president, shorn of power and, in power's absence, self-respect. The book begins with Johnson riding high as majority leader in the U.S. The fourth installment in a planned five-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson is vintage Robert Caro: enormously detailed, personality driven, power obsessed.
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