Master of the Senate

Robert A. Caro's third volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson covers Johnson's twelve years in the United States Senate, from 1949 to 1960, as a way of explaining how legislative power operates in America. Its first 100 pages recount the Senate's history, arguing that the chamber of Webster, Clay and Calhoun had dwindled into a body that only reacted to the executive. Caro then follows Johnson's climb, backed by Richard Russell and the Southern senators, to Majority Leader after a single term, and his mastery of the chamber's rules and members. He also details how Johnson destroyed regulator Leland Olds to please Texas oil backers, and his battle over the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Robert Greene called it his favorite of the biographies he read for his upcoming book.