The Passage of Power

Archival Summary & Scope

*The Passage of Power*, Book Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental *The Years of Lyndon Johnson*, chronicles the pivotal years 1958-1964. Winner of multiple prestigious awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, and hailed as one of the *New York Times’s* 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, this volume details Johnson's dramatic journey from the extraordinary power of Senate Majority Leader to the crushing isolation of the Vice Presidency, then thrust into the nation's highest office by assassination.

Caro’s unparalleled research illuminates LBJ’s intense maneuvers for the presidency, the bitter feud with Robert Kennedy, and the profound humiliation Johnson endured as Vice President. With breathtaking detail, Caro vividly recounts the Kennedy assassination through Johnson's eyes and his masterful, almost immediate assertion of presidential authority. Inheriting a nation in crisis, Johnson swiftly propelled logjammed legislation, including landmark civil rights acts, and launched the revolutionary War on Poverty. This captivating biography reveals how Johnson's political genius transformed a nation during his "finest hour," before the shadow of Vietnam, solidifying Caro’s reputation for redefining political biography.