Excerpt from Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And if something was going wrong, Lyndon Johnson would be moving even faster, moving so fast that, Neil MacNeil reported, "his baggy-cut, almost zoot suit flies open." Once, when Johnson was away from the floor, a number of senators unexpectedly began proposing one controversial, contradictory, and often confusing amendment after another to a routine Post Office appropriation bill being managed by Olin Johnston. The mere discussion of those amendments would plunge the Senate into the kind of angry debate that, in past years, would have brought it to a halt for endless days, Steele wrote; passage of any of the amendments would result in a certain Eisenhower veto. "The Senate was in a turmoil. The babble on the floor prevented senators from hearing and being heard. There were amendments to amendments; amendments offered and withdrawn; senators arose to protest they couldn't hear the debate, didn't understand what was transpiring."

Then, into this "mixed-up mess" roared Lyndon Johnson. "Quickly sizing up the situation, he began to act. He paced from one side of the Senate Chamber to the other, moving at a loping gait, the coat tails of his gray flannel suit winging out behind. He whispered with Bill Knowland, with Frank Carlson, the Administration's spokesman on postal matters; he conferred with Olin Johnston and Johnston's aide; he talked with Russell Long, Ev Dirksen, Parliamentarian Charlie Watkins, with Dick Russell; he slipped to a phone, one equipped with a baffled mouthpiece, in an alcove just off the Senate rostrum. He snapped his thumb and second finger with the retort of a firecracker to summon a page for water. . . . The Senate Majority Leader was ready to straighten things out.

"It would take some straightening out—seven different maneuvers. . . . Johnson was running the whole show. From his Majority Leader's desk, he hand-signalled the various players in the drama. He peremptorily cut senators off to seize the floor. He barked harsh orders to Jack Kennedy in the presiding officer's chair to put this question, make that ruling. He pleaded with senators to defer speeches, he whispered to aides to summon this or that senator, he snapped his fingers like a whip to fetch more water. He sped to the cloakroom for a conference and back to his desk. He ranged the aisles. . . . A legislative catastrophe [was] averted."

Excerpted from Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro Copyright 2002 by Robert A. Caro. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.