The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson by the American writer Robert Caro. Three volumes have published, running to more than 2,000 pages in total, detailing Johnson's early life, education, and political career. A fourth and fifth volume will deal with Johnson's vice presidency and presidency. The series has been published by Alfred A. Knopf.
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In the first volume, The Path to Power, Caro retraced Johnson's life by temporarily moving to rural Texas and Washington, D.C., to better understand Johnson's upbringing and to interview anyone who had known Johnson. This volume covers Johnson's life through his failed 1941 campaign for the United States Senate. This book was released on November 12, 1982. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
In the second volume, Means of Ascent, Caro detailed Johnson's life from the aftermath of Johnson's first Senate bid to his election to the Senate in 1948. Much of the book deals with Johnson's bitterly-contested Democratic primary against Coke R. Stevenson. This book was released on March 7, 1990.
In the third and most-recently published volume, Master of the Senate, Caro chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent in the United States Congress, including his tenure as Senate Majority Leader. This 1167-page work examines in particular Johnson's victorious battle to pass a landmark civil rights bill. Although its scope was limited, the ensuing Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first such legislation since Reconstruction. This book was released on April 23, 2002.
It won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, the 2002 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography.
In November 2011, it was announced that the fourth volume, tentatively titled The Passage of Power, would be released in May 2012, covering LBJ's life from 1958 to 1964, and that the full project had expanded to five volumes, with the fifth volume requiring another two to three years to write.[1][2]
Throughout his books, Caro examines the acquisition and use of political power in American democracy, from the perspective both of those who wield it and those who are at its mercy. In an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, he once said: "I was never interested in writing biography just to show the life of a great man," saying he wanted instead "to use biography as a means of illuminating the times and the great forces that shape the times—particularly political power."
Caro's books portray Johnson as alternating between scheming opportunist and visionary progressive. Caro argued, for example, that Johnson's victory in the 1948 runoff for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate was achieved through extensive fraud and ballot stuffing. Caro also highlights some of Johnson's campaign contributions, such as those from the Texas construction firm Brown & Root; in 1962 the company was acquired by another Texas firm, Halliburton, which became a major contractor in the Vietnam War. Despite these criticisms, Caro's portrayal of Johnson also notes his struggles on behalf of progressive causes such as the Voting Rights Act.
Politicians in particular have responded most strongly to The Years of Lyndon Johnson:
Lisa Simpson was shown reading Master of the Senate in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XVI." Goat was shown reading Master of the Senate in Pearls Before Swine on 13 December 2008.