As for the "unrelievedly dark" charge, I can only wonder if the critics read the same volumes I read.The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career-1958 to1964. I disagree with the allegation of sensationalism.
I have read all four volumes I have conducted independent research about those charges I have interviewed Caro. LBJ's allies, some professional historians and some jack-of-all-genres reviewers have criticized Caro for painting an unrelievedly dark, sensational picture of Johnson. Suddenly, obscure journalists (Caro was a relatively youthful newspaper reporter at the time) gained credibility as biographers, wresting the craft away from Ph.D.
Suddenly, long books about less than internationally known subjects became more attractive to publish. Despite Moses' relative obscurity outside of New York, the book won awards, sold well for years and altered the way publishers dealt with the craft of biography. In 1974, Caro changed the craft of biography in the United States with "The Power Broker," a book of more than 1,000 pages about Robert Moses, the powerful New York City urban planner. "The Passage of Power" is the fourth volume of Robert Caro's ambitious multi-volume biography of LBJ, addressing Johnson's rise to the vice presidency but frustrating drop in power.Ĭaro's earlier volumes have been controversial, massive and masterful. (This was captured perfectly in 1965 by Tom Lehrer, songwriter/satirist/performer, with his song "Whatever Became of Hubert?") His own vice president, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, experienced the same outcome after shifting from the Senate to the vice presidency. As vice president, he exercised significant influence only rarely, however, and seemed to become almost invisible to the casual follower of national politics. He finished Kennedy's term, then won his own term in 1964.Īs a senator from Texas, Johnson had accumulated perhaps unprecedented power to advance or kill legislation. Johnson became president of the United States. Kennedy died from an assassin's bullet, Lyndon B.
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