Master of the Senate
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 2 of a 3-Part Recording)
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Master of the Senate
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Narrated by:
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Grover Gardner
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By:
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Robert A. Caro
About this listen
Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate.
At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.
It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.
Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.
Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.
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Critic reviews
“A wonderful, a glorious tale.... It will be hard to equal this amazing book. It reads like a Trollope novel, but not even Trollope explored the ambitions and the gullibilities of men as deliciously as Robert Caro does. Even though I knew what the outcome of a particular episode would be, I followed Caro’s account of it with excitement. I went back over chapters to make sure I had not missed a word.... Caro’s description of how [Johnson passed the civil rights legislation] is masterly; I was there and followed the course of the legislation closely, but I did not know the half of it.” (Anthony Lewis, The New York Times Book Review)
“A masterpiece.... Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age.” (Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, London)
“Mesmerizing.... [It] brings LBJ blazing into the Senate.... A tale rife with drama and hypnotic in the telling. The historian’s equivalent of a Mahler symphony.” (Malcolm Jones, Newsweek)
What listeners say about Master of the Senate
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Brian McCarthy
- 12-02-20
Great but really poorly formatted
Firstly a bit frustrating to have it in 3 parts when others are single volumes. But this would be forgivable if not for how poorly this one is edited. See below for all the issues.
- Initial chapters repeat from volume 1
- Chapter headings don't line up with when chapters end. As such the chapters laid out are just randomly placed in the text.
- When chapters end in the audiobook they often repeat the last line(s) of the previous "chapter" which is just poor quality in general.
Ultimately great story and enjoy it greatly but it's just unfortunate that such easily fixed mistakes have been made in this volume, it wouldn't even take all that long to rectify if someone did decide to fix it.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- GW
- 30-12-18
Mesmerising but editing poor
This is so fantastic but the first few chapters are a repeat of volume 1, and then some sentences are randomly repeated. Careless.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mark Pack
- 02-01-17
Great book, great narrator, surprisingly poor edit
Would you listen to Master of the Senate - The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume III (Part 2 of a 3-Part Recording) again? Why?
The book is brilliant, the story fascinating and the narration excellent.
Any additional comments?
But the editing of the second part of the three-part audio book is surprisingly poor. On more than a dozen occasions bits of text are repeated as the audio track suddenly doubles back by a few words or even a few sentences. The first part was edited professionally without such errors. It looks like by the time of the second part time or budget was too short to avoid repeatedly making a basic mistake.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- E P
- 29-04-19
Great story sloppy editing
Middle part of Master of the Senate remains engrossing.
Sloppy editing is annoying: sentences repeated and the books first few chapters repeat the last few of the first part
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Audible Customer
- 16-10-21
Forensic!
continuing the Johnson saga in its complexity. the shear detail in the author's narration is mind boggling, but compelling at the same time. on to part 3.... can't wait!
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 22-04-18
Good book, poor editing
Great story and narration, but many repeated phrases throughout that should have been caught in the edit
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1 person found this helpful