The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent.

CARO, Robert A.

Item Number: 136993

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

First edition of Caro’s second volume in his acclaimed Johnson series. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated with 32 pages of photographs. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Martin M. Siegel- with best wishes from Robert A. Caro.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by R.D. Scudellari.

In Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro brings alive Lyndon Johnson in his wilderness years. Here, Johnson’s almost mythic personality—part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculating—is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his 1941 campaign for the Senate-the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut-through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it). The culminating drama—the explosive heart of the book—is Caro’s illumination, based on extraordinarily detailed investigation, of one of the great political mysteries of the century. Having immersed himself in Johnson’s life and world, Caro is able to reveal the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson was not believed capable of winning, which he “had to” win or face certain political death, and which he did win-by 87 votes, the “87 votes that changed history.”