A couple of years ago, I picked up a copy of Richard Caro's Pulitzer Prize winning Master of the Senate, the third volume in his ongoing biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It's a book of over 1,000 pages and I devoured it in less than a week. Then for some reason this fall, I picked it up and again read it cover to cover in less than a week. One thing that really made an impact on me was the process within the US Senate that got the Civil Rights bills of the 1950's and 1960's passed. Throughout the sections dealing with the passage of Civil Rights bills as well as the entire book, references were made to senators at that time. Many of these men and one woman (Margaret Chase Smith of Maine) were huge political figures in history of the United States and gigantic men of stature in their home states. Thus began the current theme of my reading, biographies of politicians of the latter half of the 20th century. Obscure? You know it. Here's not only a list, but pictures of the covers of said books pilfered from Amazon.com. They are presented in the order I read them:
Reading about Jackson demanded that I read about his colleague and Warren G. Magnuson.
The common theme through both these books is that even though these two senators were individually stellar politicians, they were as a pair more than the sum of their parts. The role of Magnuson's Commerce Committee, which he chaired, in passing Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill allowing all people the right to public accomodations was one that led to more reading about the entire Civil Rights Bill process.
The following three are men who were mentioned throughout these books and so with Amazon's used book section, they became an inexpensive entertainment option.
Yeah, I know I'm a bit weird. Tune in next time to see who's biography I read next.
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