Longer answer - from my prospective - I enjoyed the first book Path to Power the most, which revolves around LBJs early life up to becoming a US Representative. I thought it was very on par with the Power Broker. That an the Power Broker would probably be my first recommendation to an ambitious college kid who wants to know the real Politik of how the world works.
The next book Means of Assent was my least favorite of Caro’s books, but still highly enjoyable.
Master of the Senate and Passage of Power are both great. But sort of specific to LBJs spot in life. Great, but I’m not sure they sparked my thinking quite the way the Power Broker and Path to Power did.
The books are designed to be standalone-ish, so later volumes spend a fair bit of time repeating things from earlier books. Caro goes deep, deep into various shady acts and new scandals which were probably shocking and relevant in 1982 but less so four decades later.
Caro also touches on a lot of the same topics as The Power Broker, and the picture he paints of LBJ ends up sounding quite a lot like Robert Moses. Is it because all powerful men inevitably end up as bullying psychopaths, or does Caro have something of an axe to grind? 50/50, maybe.
Longer answer - from my prospective - I enjoyed the first book Path to Power the most, which revolves around LBJs early life up to becoming a US Representative. I thought it was very on par with the Power Broker. That an the Power Broker would probably be my first recommendation to an ambitious college kid who wants to know the real Politik of how the world works.
The next book Means of Assent was my least favorite of Caro’s books, but still highly enjoyable.
Master of the Senate and Passage of Power are both great. But sort of specific to LBJs spot in life. Great, but I’m not sure they sparked my thinking quite the way the Power Broker and Path to Power did.