The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol I

"Caro is another master storyteller. Like Parton, Caro supplements the written record with fresh evidence. He was a journalist. He interviewed all sorts of people and got information on Johnson that others hadn’t uncovered. He tells a great, gripping story. One of his volumes on Lyndon Johnson is called The Path to Power. Caro is fascinated by how people acquire power, what they use power to accomplish, and how power changes them. I’m pretty sure Caro came to Texas thinking he would write one volume, but he realised that there was an epic tale to tell, and he stuck with it. When the next volume is completed, I’m sure it will be seen as the masterwork on Johnson. But each volume is terrific in its own right. Johnson did a pretty good job in guiding American foreign policy, except for Vietnam. Johnson kept the NATO alliance together when it was under substantial strain. He managed to avoid major crises with the Soviet Union. He helped put India on a path to self-sufficiency. He prevented a war between Greece and Turkey over the island of Cyprus. And he handled the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours as well as any American president could have handled it. So as I say, a lot of bad stuff could have happened during the 1960s, but didn’t. One of the reasons is that Johnson handled most aspects of foreign policy adeptly. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter To paint a full picture? Yes. But to paint a compelling picture? I have to say no, because I’ve committed a few one-volumes myself. As much as I value these multi-volume works, I do think you can tell a great story between the two covers of one book. You have to delve into the personal side of the president in a way that gets at the character of the individual—but you also have to get the wider context right. Presidential biographies are generally written by historians or by journalists. The journalists tend to get the personal side right; the historians tend to get the historical side right. The best presidential biographies get both right—the life and the times. By working on a biography of Ulysses S Grant. This interview was published in February 2011."