Rating: 
Summary: You can almost touch the Johnson that Caro portrays
Review: Robert Caro has proven himself to be the best biographer that I have come across. Only Carl Sandburg seems to stand close in his extensive research. The beauty in Caro's works, whether Moses or Johnson the subject, lies with his ability to focus on the "power" aspect of his characters. If you have any interest in the inner-workings of political life you must read this series. To understand why the quest for power exists in this incredible man, you MUST read this bio!
Rating:
Summary: Well Written, Engrossing Biography of a Real Person
Review: I picked up this book largely ignorant of LBJ (he died 4 months before I was born), so I had little preconceived notions of the man. This fine bio really opened up the future president as a real person to me.Too often, books about presidents try to paint the subject as either a great man or a scoundrel. While seeming to do the latter, the author actually dodges both categories and simply tells a tale of the creation of a president. Caro subscribes to a hybrid of the "nature or nurture" theory (one of genetics or surroundings affecting what kind of person you become). Accordingly, Caro doesn't even really address his subject until fairly deep into the text, the first part of the book being more of a brief history of the Texas Hill Country through the eyes of LBJ's family line. By doing so, he thoroughly covers LBJ's origins (both familial and geographic). When he does start looking at Johnson it is, admittedly, less than flattering. But it is REAL. Not really knowing much about the man he would become, I found the boy and man that he had been to be surprisingly real. This book doesn't seem to take a political tone that so many of the biographies of recent figures do. Caro avoids the commentary common on famous people that are still remembered (as opposed to say Teddy Roosevelt or George Washington) who still carry with them an emotional context for many Americans. Caro certainly has strong opinions, but he makes a clear distinction between those opinions and facts, often phrasing opinions in a paragraph of questions to make the reader think about the material he just digested. It is clear what he thinks the answers are, but he refrains from actually answering them for you. Whatever your take on Caro's Johnson, one has to respect his view as an informed one. Caro immersed himself in LBJ's life, lived where Johnson lived, interviewed thousands of those who knew him, and spent years reviewing LBJ's papers in Austin. Some take issue with his conclusions, but he is well qualified to make them. (For another well documented biography that covers the often glossed over early years of great men, try "The Invention of George Washington" by Paul K. Longmore.)
Rating: 
Summary: A historian's analysis
Review: Succinctly, the book is trash. It is another product of the Republican sleaze machine. Some good trees were ruined for nothing.
Rating:
Summary: A Portrait of a Complex Man
Review: In some biographies, the subject is so charming that you read with delight. McCullough's "Truman" is an example of this, but so are Brands' "The First American" (about Benjamin Franklin) and Smith's "John Marshall". On the other hand, I couldn't finish Massie's brilliant biography, "Peter the Great". The subject's cruelty was so manifest that at a certain point I didn't care to know more about him.
So, I'm a little surprised that I found "Path to Power" spellbinding. Johnson comes aross as pathetic and despicable -- even if his genius and drive also come across. Yet the book is absorbing. To explain the attractiveness of the character here portrayed, perhaps one has to reach back for comparison to the attractiveness of Shakeseare's Richard III. Both Richard and Johnson were scoundrels, but somehow the audience/reader feels both compassion and admiration for them: compassion for Richard because of his deformity, for Johnson because of his impoverished childhood and deep-seated insecurities; and admiration for their genius.
Johnson invariably proved himself to be a "go-to" man, the operator who could get things done that nobody else could, even if they were ostensibly more powerful than he was. Caro writes of the terribly harsh, mediaeval circumstances of rural Texas farm families in the Hill Country before electrification. That makes you all the more impressed by Johnson's surprisingly effective struggle as a young Congressman to bring electricity to these families through a government program when, on paper, they weren't remotely eligible for it. This episode is an example of Johnson' more than world-class virtuosity in accumulating political power and his benevolent, if politically self-serving, use of it.
This book has interesting side-biographies of persons who intersected Johnson's life -- from House Speaker Sam Rayburn, to Alice Glass (Johnson's lover and the consort of a powerful newpaper publisher), to W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel (who defeated Johnson in his first Senatorial election campaign).
This book discusses Johnson's family history and childhood, his college years, his tenure as a teacher, Congressional secretary and New Deal NYA director in Texas, his early Congressional years and his first Senate campaign.
Rating:
Summary: Great biography of a complex man
Review: I read this first volume of Johnson's life almost twenty years ago, and no biography has impressed more since that time. And over the past twenty years, I have read over 100 biographies of many great people. From the time I began reading the book, I was unable to put it down until thoroughly digested. This magnificent work provides a first-hand account of the Johnson character--the insecure young adult, the overbearing husband, the devious politician, and the master campaigner. Before reading Caro's two additional sequals to this first volume, you must read "The Path to Power" to fully appreciate the complexity and genius of Lyndon Johnson.
Rating:
Summary: A master work about a master politican
Review: Robert A. Caro has done such extensive research that LBJ's every major life influence leading to his first election to Congress is there for all to see. Brown & Root supplanted the old Texas tradition of the three B's and their sponsorship of the young Congressman made his first two terms a breathtaking climb into the upper echelon of his party. Caro has a way of describing the acquisition and use of political power in a manner that affords an interested reader with insights that would otherwise have been unavailable. His book The Power Broker, is an amazing description of the single most powerful -non elected- man in the history of the City of New York (my home town). That work well and truly set the tone for his life's work and the LBJ trilogy is now complete with the Path to Power, The Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate. The insight into the mind behind the 1964 Civil Rights Act is invaluable to any student of the Constitution. Every Caro book is a must read for any person concerned with the U.S. political system in the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: A great read, but.....
Review: This huge first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson tells the story of Johnson's life up to the time of his defeat in the Texas senatorial election of 1941. I enjoyed the book very much, staying up late into the night to read more, yet having now finished it I thought that - somewhat perversely perhaps - the book's weaknesses as a biography were its strengths as a more general work of historical analysis. Although the book is about Johnson, Caro doesn't restrain himself from letting his focus shift away from Johnson for long stretches: for example, the natural history and settlement of the Texas Hill Country are described in detail (fascinating to someone like me who knew next to nothing about these subjects); and the lives of other people who were important to Johnson are described in great detail (Sam Rayburn in particular). I was happy to follow Caro down these roads, as he wrote so compellingly - for example, the descriptions of women's lives in the Hill Country should destroy a few rural myths. Other historians would have abbreviated or summarised such descriptions to the absolute minimum necessary to add to the reader's understanding of the context of the subject's life, whilst maintaining the overall focus on the subject himself. Indeed, at times, Caro loses sight of Johnson completely, and the book becomes more of a general history. I felt that Caro made up his mind that Johnson was an utterly unscrupulous and amoral politician, totally devoted to the acquisition of power. The picture he paints of Johnson and of American democracy is unflattering - elections and politicians are there to be bought - money is everything. We're in a precursor stage to the "military-industrial complex". Even where Johnson did good, Caro's praise is brief (for example in his determination to force through the rural electrification program). I thought that there needed to be a better balance - surely there were issues other than money and gerrymandering that decided elections in the US? Or am I being naive? Also, if Johnson the man was such a hated person, why did he evoke such loyalty? It seems too dismissive to explain this by stating that other people were furthering their own self-interest through Johnson. I feel somewhat churlish at criticising a book I enjoyed so much, but I will read the next volume!
Rating:
Summary: A Page-Turner, though pretty negative
Review: This is an incredible book - Caro lived in the Texas Hill Country for 5 years, interviewed Johnson's classmates and students (most of whom were still alive when this book was written in the 1980s), and paints an unforgettable picture of Texas politics, society, and above all, Lyndon Johnson. Caro paints a picture of domestic life in 1930s Texas that still lingers in my mind - a chapter called The Sad Irons. Warning: Johnson comes across in these pages as a monster; Caro is very negative. I am not sure if the succeeding volumes of Caro's Johnson bio are like this. In some cases, I thought it was overdone. Young Lyndon could not have been THAT bad! But if you have an interest in Texas, Johnson, or state politics in general, reach for this book. It will be hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Less is Not More
Review: The only problem with Path to Power and its companion, Means of Accent, is that Robert Caro is slow in delivering the remaining three installments of a promised five-part series. Caro writes historical biography with a smooth, descriptive delivery that puts you at ease in examining LBJ's life regardless of your political persuation. I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Too black and white
Review: People love Caro's biography because of his excellent prose and character development. The problem with his biographies is that he always paints his subjects as villains and goes to great length to make all of their opponents heroes. Path to Power is no exception this unfortunate trend. Lyndon Johnson is a complex, tragic, and deeply flawed character worthy of a nuanced study. Instead Caro delivers a kind of Passion play, painting LBJ as an evil man, devoid of redeeming features. What is amazing is the twisted lengths Caro will go to in order to write this story. For example, Coke Stevens, a racist white supremacist with few redeeming features is rewritten as a kind of Lefty populist, simply because he is an opponent of LBJ. Efforts to create a black and white world, with LBJ always in the black hat puts the usefulness of this entire biography in doubt. If you want a deeper understanding of LBJ that includes his strengths without ever dennying is considerable failures, I recommend Robert Dallek's two volume set. Caro's work pales by comparison.
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