The Path To Power
Traces Johnson's life from his Texas childhood through his rise to political power and his successful 1948 senatorial campaign.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
13mentions
9people
2012–2025years
54% recommend46% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you can, read Robert Caro's The Path To Power (Caro's The Power Broker has been a HN favorite ever since Aaron Swartz recommended it). It's the story of the first ~30 years of Lyndon B Johnson's life.
I forget which chapter it is, but Caro takes a detour where he describes the life of women during Johnson's childhood in the dirt-poor valley he was from: no electricity, no waterpower, everything in the house was done by women's hands, 24/7. There's a passage that stuck to me about how women in their 30s in that area looked like other area's women in their 70s, just a brutal life.
- Fiction:
A Little Life - challenging to read but exceptional
Sci-fi
Three Body Problem trilogy - forget the Netflix series the books are excellent, in my opinion #2 was the peak.
The Glass Hotel, Station Eleven, Sea of Tranquility - anything by Emily St. John Mandel - hard to place but her distinct writing style transports me.
Non-fiction:
American Moonshot - fine The Path to Power - anything Caro writes is worth reading
- 'The Path To Power', Caro, first volume of his LBJ biography. Elsewhere ('Working'), Caro has explained that his career in writing is to make clear how power is acquired and used. I think he achieves this goal here and am looking forward to the remaining volumes.
'Spiritual Formation', Henri Nouwen. A deep, Catholic, thinker with much to offer those who are looking in this direction.
'In A Sunburned Country', Bryson. Bryson is an ideal travel companion.
'The Information', Gleick. A tour of the ideas and technologies underneath how we became so dependent on bits.
'Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons'... the most worthwhile part was how my son and I bonded over working through the lessons.
- Robert Caro's The Path To Power.
It's the first volume of a set of biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson, but it's so much more an exploration of how power works and shapes. Caro is obsessed with power (thus the other classic: Caro's The Power Broker). Learning how Johnson learned how to wield power made me see the impact of power in my daily work and interactions, and hopefully, taught me how to predict how 'upstairs' reacts. It's all about power.
- Top 2 so far:
The Washington book is a very detailed by clear overview of his life. Easy to follow (even for complex situations) and very week written.* Washington: A life by Ron Chernow * The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis HansonThe WW2 book is amazing. Compares the countries fighting in around 20 different areas (technology, leadership, geography, aircraft) and says who is better and why.
Also very good:
* FDR by Jean Edward Smith * Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro * The Penguin History of New Zealand by Michael King * The years of Lyndon Johnson 2 – Means of Ascent by Robert Caro * Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan * Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe * How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley * Yeager: An Autobiography by Chuck Yeager * The years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert Caro * The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson * Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson * An Economist walks into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk by Allison Schrager * The Devil’s Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood by Julie Salamon * Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton - > For two decades and more, in states all across the country, delegations of farmers...had come...to the paneled offices of utility-company executives to ask to be allowed to enter the age of electricity. They came in delegations...begging the “power company” in vain to extend electricity to [their] farm; an Arkansas rural leader, “Uncle John” Hobbs, would, even years later, begin to cry remembering the day “he pleaded with the Arkansas Power & Light Company in vain to build a line to his home, a short distance from one of their lines, when his wife was ill and desperately needed the help electricity could provide.” But in delegations or alone, the answer they received was almost invariably the same: that it was too expensive—as much as $5,000 per mile, the utilities said—to build lines to individual farms; that even if the lines were built, farmers would use little electricity because they couldn’t afford to buy electrical appliances; that farmers wouldn’t even be able to pay their monthly electricity bills, since, due to low usage, farm rates would have to be higher—more than two times higher, in fact—than rates in urban areas.
> Studies had long disproved the utilities’ figures. A 1925 survey in Wisconsin found that the cost of lines would be not $5,000 but $1,225 per mile.
The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I (pp. 714-715). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I'll admit that Caro is not always right, but I'd love some proof to the contrary.
