Bibliography, April 2025

BOTM: R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: master of the senate (2003)

R. H. Benson, Lord of the world (1908)

R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: the passage of power (2012)
W. Dalrymple and A. Anand, Kohinoor: the story of the world's most infamous diamond (2020)
N. Duerden, Exit stage left: the curious afterlife of pop stars (2022)
J. Meades, The plagiarist in the kitchen (2018)
N. Novik, His Majesty's dragon (2006)
M.S. Pillai, Rebel sultans: the Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji (2018)
R. Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

R. Zelazny, A night in lonesome October (1994)

A lot of these were mediocre. Duerden, Novik, Dalrymple, and Benson were all actively bad, with flashes of quality or information in some places. I did enjoy Meades and Zelazny, though I suspect I didn't have as much fun as they did writing and conceiving them (Zelazny's book is written from the perspective of Jack the Ripper's dog).

On the other hand, I am definitely glad I was reading rather than researching Caro's volumes 3 and 4. Volume 3, on Johnson's senate career, is the best of the lot, and is as much a history of the mid century senate as it is of Johnson. As a result, it is a thousand pages long. It's an astonishing book, that penetrates a world that seems unimaginable, yet was vital, and is engrossing about the tactics and practicalities of power. It's a marvel.

Bibliography, March 2023

BOTM: R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: the path to power (1982)

R. Caro, The years of Lyndon Johnson: the means of ascent (1990)
A. Patchett, The patron saint of liars (1992)
--------, Taft (1994)
--------, The magician's apprentice (1997)
--------, Tom Lake (2019)
E. Wald, Dylan goes electric! (2015)

I'm deliberately reading a lot about America this year, and this month is, accidentally, entirely American - and deeply homogenous. I'm delighted that I've now read all of Patchett's novels and have always thought she was great. Of these, I liked The magician's apprentice the best. It's a curious idea for a novel, but lives are curious and it was expertly, softly, done. My completist nature is even more excited by the prospect of addressing Caro's Lyndon four volume (to date) Johnson biography. I've been thinking about it for years, but kept putting it off because of it's massive length. I regret that. It's a masterpiece. I read the first two volumes in March and they're both compelling, but the first is the better (I think the second is the weakest of the four). It is obviously too long, he's not born for the first fifty odd pages, but the length and the detail is the point. It's an immersion in a world and the nuances of that world aren't obvious to us without that detail. Two standout moments for me:

• Firstly, the chapter on Johnson bringing electricity to the Hill Country of Texas is a truly astonishing piece of writing, which drops an astounding evocation from social history into a biography, and makes you realise the power of politics to change things
• Second, a vignette from the end, when Johnson loses his first senate campaign because although he stole votes, his opponent's backers stole more. Hearing this news, FDR talks about his own vote stealing. We forget how short the distance is to voting working like that in the US.

Anyway, it told me lots about America, lots about Lyndon Johnson, and lots about what I like in politicians (not what I look for in friends). I wish I'd read it sooner.