Okay so when does he stop talking about tangential shit like the geography of the Great Plains and corralling cattle and start talking about relevant facts? I'm 100 pages in and LBJ isn't even born yet
is that why his books are so long? I have never read Caro but i assumed it was all dense, analytical stuff and not tangents
>>23820753>Reads Robert Caro>Expects him to get straight to the pointYour fault.
>he expects a the path to power to follow a linear trajectorySimply not management material.
NGMI
>>23821298>>23821315>>23821532>fell for the robert caro meme>in denial about your buyers remorse>"uhhh no i enjoyed his 200 page diatribes about wheat fields, it was integral to Johnson's decision to escalate the war in vietnam"
>>23821668>I'll have those niggers reading verbose nonsense for 200 years
>>23820753Robert Caro is probably the best writer of nonfiction there is. The stuff you are complaining about is context for things that happen throughout Johnson's life. It explains his mentality, the sense of history that informs his actions. The years of LBJ series is not just about Johnson. It's essentially the history of the United States as it becomes the world's major superpower. The section on sad irons is some of the most evocative writing about the ability of government to have a positive impact in average people's lives there ever has been. In the second book, the description of the life of Coke R Stevenson is one of the best biographies ever written. The books simply have a much grander scale than you understand.
>>23821943Kek
>>23822305I admit I laughed too when I saw that
Modern biography sucks, dude. Plutarch covered all the important people of Greece and Rome in a few hundred pages and Suetonius all the Caesars in like a hundred. Notker gave Charlemagne like 50 pages. The idea that I’d need 500 for LBJ is fucking crazy.
>>23820753Here’s some relevant facts >Caro's son, Chase, pled guilty to second-degree grand larceny in 2007 for stealing over $750,000 from three former clients in the course of real estate transactions. In April 2008, he was sentenced to 2+1⁄2–7+1⁄2 years in prison after admitting to stealing $310,000 meant for his grandparents' trust fund. Chase agreed to pay restitution of $1.1 million, which includes funds from a third theft. All his sentences ran concurrently. As of 2012, Chase works in information technology.Keeping up the tradition of being a sheisty Jew that likes to jerk people around alright. One with words, one with actions
>>23821668I think this has its roots in Freudian psychobiographies of politicans which were popular in the interwar period>this dictator was raper by his uncle as a 6 year old boy which is reflected in his decision to raise tariffs in order to protect domestic industries, he's compensating for the lack of protection he had as a child
>>23822314Psychobiography and meta-biography are different beasts though, if only slightly. Both are interesting forms of historical writing though.
