LBJ in living color

I first encountered Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson biography of LBJ as a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection sometime back in the early 1980s when I was still in high school. I was a bit intimidated by the first offering, The Path to Power which weighed in at around 1000 pages with notes. Still, I dived into it and was definitely rewarded for the effort. I have yet to read another book about any historical figure with the historical depth, panoramic sweep, and narrative skill of Caro's first volume on LBJ. I was captivated and felt that I could almost feel and smell the Texas Hill Country that formed Lyndon Johnson. I know the word "magisterial" is thrown around far too easily with biographies and histories, but this is truly a magisterial work and is only one of a proposed three-volume (now four volume) biography of LBJ.
Caro began his career as a journalist and so his writing is very accessible and is not academic. Having said that, later historians (notably Robert Dallek, author of a two-volume LBJ bio of his own) slam Caro for his lack of objectivity, which Caro addresses. Caro began this project as a LBJ fan, but has grown to dislike the man in the nearly forty years he has spent on this man. Volume 1 is pretty balanced, but this is a warts and all biography. This volume closes in 1941 after Johnson has been elected to the House of Representatives and becomes an adoring protege of the legendary Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn.
If you want to read a riveting political biography, I could not recommend this volume highly enough.
Czar