The first of a projected four-volume biography/history of Lyndon Baines Johnson by Robert Caro (the first three are currently in print). Extraordinary is the best word for this biography. Charts Johnson's roots in the Hill Country of Texas and his often unscrupulous rise to political prominence in the '30s and '40s. Caro paints a portrait of a troubled, insecure, petty manipulator with a first-rate poltical intelligence who cut an unequalled swath across the 20th Century's political landscape as a US representative, senator (and, arguably, the greatest Senate majority leader ever), unwilling vice president and, finally, president during the dark era of Viet Nam. First-rate political biography from the author of Pulitizer Prize-winning (1974) "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York."