Word: caro
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...Boswells are not always so enamored of their subjects. "I thought I was going to love Lyndon Johnson," says Journalist Robert Caro. "I knew he was going to be shrewd and tough and ruthless, but that was all right." Caro, 47, a former investigative reporter, should have known better. The Power Broker, his 1,200-page study of New York's urban-development and highway czar Robert Moses, so unsettled its subject that he issued a rebuttal to Caro's many allegations. Despite objections, the book won a Pulitzer Prize. In The Path to Power, the 882-page...
Whatever the merits of the case, Caro's detective work must have worn out more than one pair of shoes. Caro and his wife Ina, a historian, actually moved to the remote Texas hill country of Johnson's youth. There he conducted many of the more than 700 interviews for his book. Even high school sweethearts and L.B.J.'s first campaign driver were included. At one point, Caro describes the young congressional aide's first view of the Capitol. The author felt it to be a symbol of what Washington represented to the youthful L.B.J. Caro...
NONFICTION: Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon ∙ Growing Up, Russell Baker ∙ Hospital, Michael Medved ∙ In Suspect Terrain, John McPhee ∙ Isak Dinesen, Judith Thurman ∙ The Path to Power, Robert A. Caro...
Somehow, Johnson's dam-financing shenanigans seem less than wholly reprehensible when the reader bears in mind the back-breaking labor involved in household chores in south-central Texas until the young Congressman brought cheap power to the region. Caro separates the cause of the cheap power from its effect, and thus fails to note the main lesson of Johnson's career...
Despite his lack of coherent, consistent political ideals, despite the taint of corruption that surrounds his rise through the political ranks, the fact remains that, at least in the period covered by this book. Lyndon Johnson used his power to the great benefit of his Hill Country constituents. Caro fails to drive home this point; the tone of condemnation that ultimately emerges from his political squeamishness is the biography's only great flaw. Still, the book's thoroughness over-rules this blindness. If Caro's next two volumes are as compelling and groundbreaking as this one, he will have completed...