Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #2)
by Robert A. Caro
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0394499735
- ISBN 13
- 9780394499734
- Seller
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San Antonio, Texas, United States
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About This Item
Hardcover Cloth 506 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Stated First edition 1990. Handsome black boards and gold embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book has slight shelf wear. Gift inscription on front endpapers. An unclipped dust jacket smooth, clean and brilliant a few wrinkles and stains - the usual shelf wear. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson is the political biography of our time. No president—no era of American politics—has been so intensively and sharply examined at a time when so many prime witnesses to hitherto untold or misinterpreted facets of a life, a career, and a period of history could still be persuaded to speak. the second volume in Robert Caro's multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United States.
This book covers Johnson's life from 1941 to 1948, during which time he went from being a little-known congressman to a powerful figure in Washington D.C. The book focuses primarily on Johnson's 1948 campaign for the U.S. Senate, which was one of the most controversial in American history. Caro details Johnson's tactics in the campaign, which included using his vast network of political connections to manipulate the vote in his favor.
The book also explores Johnson's personal life during this time, including his marriage to Lady Bird Johnson and his numerous extramarital affairs. Caro paints a vivid picture of the political landscape in Texas during the 1940s, describing the corrupt practices that were common among politicians at the time. He also portrays Johnson as a master manipulator who was willing to do whatever it took to win, including spreading rumors and using illegal campaign tactics.
"Means of Ascent" is a fascinating and highly detailed account of Lyndon B. Johnson's rise to power. Caro's meticulous research and engaging writing style make the book a must-read for anyone interested in American politics or 20th century history.
Synopsis
For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best "exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist." To create his first book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Caro spent seven years tracing and talking with hundreds of men and women who worked with, for, or against Robert Moses, including a score of his top aides. He examined mountains of files never open to the public. Everywhere acclaimed as a modern classic, The Power Broker was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century. It is, according to David Halberstam, "Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." And The New York times Book Review said: "In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort." To research The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro and his wife, Ina, moved from his native New York City to the Texas Hill Country and then to Washington, D.C., to live in the locales in which Johnson grew up and in which he built, while he was still young, his first political machine. He has spent years examining documents at the Johnson Library in Austin and interviewing men and women connected with Johnson's life, many of whom had never before been interviewed. The first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, was cited by The Washington Post as "proof that we live in a great age of biography... [a book] of radiant excellence... Caro's evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson's unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually work, are—let it be said flat out—at the summit of American historical writing." Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia University called the second volume, Means of Ascent, "brilliant. No review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born." And the London Times hailed volume three, Masters of the Senate, as "a masterpiece... Robert Caro has written on of the truly great political biographies of the modern age." "Caro has a unique place among American political biographers," according to The Boston Globe . "He has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured." And Nicholas von Hoffman wrote: "Caro has changed the art of political biography." Caro graduated from Princeton University and later became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ina, an historian and writer. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Details
- Seller
- River House Books (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 656930
- Title
- Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #2)
- Author
- Robert A. Caro
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover Cloth
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0394499735
- ISBN 13
- 9780394499734
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1990
- Pages
- 506
- Size
- octavo
- Bookseller catalogs
- Biography; First Editions;
Terms of Sale
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