
Robert A. Caro on the means and ends of power - jger15
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/01/magazine/robert-caro-working-memoir.html
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a_bonobo
Aaron Swartz on The Power Broker:

>I cannot possibly say enough good things about this book. Go read it. Right
now. Yes, I know it’s long, but trust me, you’ll wish it was longer. I think
it may be simply the best nonfiction book.

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/books2009](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/books2009)

Also quoted in this longer article on transparency in government:
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/transparencybunk](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/transparencybunk)

~~~
dondawest
THE POWER BROKER is one of the most fulfilling and detailed and well-
researched books I have ever read in my life. Caro is the best biographer I
have ever encountered on the page. The richness he puts into the history he
tells is truly unbelievable. After reading that book I felt like I deeply knew
— and hated - Tammany Hall, hahaha

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georgeecollins
If you have never read the Power Broker, or say "Master of the Senate" (the
3rd LBJ book) and you have any interest in politics or American history.. well
you should! So much of the discussion of the problems of the American city is
informed by the Power Broker. Before that people I really don't think many
people thought about it.

~~~
hackerbrother
You have to read the first two also, of course! The second one includes a
great sub-biography of Coke Stevenson, a former governor of Texas. LBJ beat
him when he ran for senate by stealing and buying votes.

~~~
jkuria
Yep. The infamous ballot box number 13 determined the course of American
history. Without that stolen box, LBJ would not have become a senator and
would not therefore not have become president. His means to power were always
corrupt (he stole elections at the student body president level and the
congressmen assistants organization) but once he attained it, he was
surprisingly effective. From electrification of the rural Texas Hill country
from which he hailed to enacting legislation for the civil rights movement.

~~~
bkohlmann
History may have been different but to say LBJ wouldn’t have found a way to
power via the senate or even the presidency is impossible to say. He knew how
to survive amidst setbacks...who knows what would’ve happened if he lost that
race.

~~~
georgeecollins
Having read these books I think there are two ways to look at it. On one hand,
in Means of Ascent you see how LBJ became a congressman against terrific odds
by sheer force of will, brains, and excellent advisors / supporters. On the
other hand, you see that later in life he either takes fewer risks or is more
complacent by the time of the 1960 presidential campaign. The democratic
nomination was his to lose, and if he had pushed for it he would have gotten
it, not Kennedy.

So if LBJ had lost that Senate race in 1948, which aspect of his character
would dominate? What is so great about those books is how they reveal the
complexity of an individual's character.

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smacktoward
_> A biography of Al Smith is the one that I’m sorry I’m not going to get to
do. The more you learn about Al Smith, the more you realize he is probably the
most forgotten consequential figure in American history._

Oh, man. A Caro biography of Al Smith would have been a fantastic project. I'm
as sorry at not getting to read it as he is about not getting to write it.

~~~
Spooky23
The power broker does a good job at chalking out some of interesting things
about Al Smith to help guide further reading.

Smith, FDR and Johnson are great figures to help understand and why modern
America is what it is.

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daltonlp
William Manchester is about the only writer who comes near Robert Caro. If you
liked The Power Broker, you may want to read his _American Caesar_ , or _The
Arms of Krupp._

 _The Private Life of Chairman Mao_ is another tremendous account of the
excesses of power.

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omilu
Conan obrien is a huge Caro fan

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cm2012
This is a really great interview.

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skookumchuck
As I get older, I find I am reading more and more non-fiction and less and
less fiction. I had a curious epiphany about it.

I novel has a beginning, middle, and end. That's all there is to it. If you're
a fan, there's nothing more. You can study it all you like, it's fruitless.
You can see this with the Star Trek fans, all that interest and excitement
pretty much goes nowhere. They wind up memorizing the scripts and doing
cosplay.

With non-fiction, there's no beginning and no end. There is always more to the
story. There are details omitted. There's a bias. It's like a fractal, the
closer you get, the more detail there is. Thus if you find it interesting, you
can satisfy that itch for more.

Caro's books are ones that satisfy the itchy person who wants to delve much
deeper into a story than the usual insipid treatment. And if that isn't
enough, Caro didn't include everything, there's always more for the next
historian to unearth.

~~~
ctchocula
I think there is a lot of value in fiction. Reading some classics like the
sibling commenter mentioned: Shakespeare, Homer, Tolstoy, etc. Even if the
fiction is a lie, you learn a lot about how other people think through
fiction. "Fiction is a lie that tells the truth" or so they say [1].

Even with Star Trek beyond TNG, the show fundamentally reflects Gene
Roddenberry's ideas of what a post-scarcity society (symbolized by the
replicator) looks like. Unlike our society that prizes money as what others
judge you based on, in Star Trek, there is no money. People have the right not
to work if they don't want to, but to gain prestige you need to contribute to
society by joining Starfleet where values like morality and heroism are highly
prized [2].

[1]
[http://edteck.peterpappas.com/rothberg/fictionisalie.htm](http://edteck.peterpappas.com/rothberg/fictionisalie.htm)

[2]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27040338-trekonomics](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27040338-trekonomics)

~~~
aestetix
Good fiction explores ideas which are timeless.

Also, I would say that the "beginning, middle, end" model is a rather
superficial framing. Take the Homeric works like the Iliad, for example. It
starts right in the middle of a massive conflict that leads to the Trojan War
(in media res). A new reader actually has to spend some time reading to get
context as to what the hell is going on, and why.

Also, novels are not the only forms of fiction. What about plays and short
stories, or even songs?

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skookumchuck
I enjoy songs. A lot. The lyrics, however, are meaningless, mostly just short
phrases repeated ad nauseum. It's silly to impute deep meaning into them.

    
    
        She loves you, yeah yeah yeah
        She loves you, yeah yeah yeah
        She loves you,
        and you know that can't be bad!

~~~
aestetix
What about lyrics from artists like Bob Dylan? Clearly I'm not the only one
who thinks he writes poetry, given that he won the Nobel Prize for it ;)

~~~
skookumchuck
Sure, Dylan writes poetry. And it's enjoyable, I have many Dylan CDs. But if
you're interested in learning more, it's a dead end.

