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

Often, while he was talking to one senator, a call he needed to take immediately would come in on another line. A clerk would tap timidly on the door of the booth in which Johnson was talking, and tell him the other senator was ready. Stepping out of the booth, the telephone still in his hand, the cord stretching with him, Johnson would reach into the other booth and take that receiver, and then stand between the two booths, with the cords stretching out from them to his hands. Or he might want to talk to two or three or even four of his "players"---senators with disagreements about the same amendment---at the same time, and he talked to them at the same time, on two or three or four phones, standing in the narrow aisle between the two rows of phone booths with a receiver, or two receivers, grasped in each big hand, talking first into one receiver, then into another, long black cords stretching out from his tall figure in all directions.

Sometimes this telephone persuasion would be successful. Then, moving from booth to booth, Johnson would slam the receivers back into their cradles, a thin smile of satisfaction on his face. Sometimes it wouldn't. Then, with a grimace of disgust and fury, Johnson would drop the receivers, or hurl them to the floor so hard that they bounced and their cords would still be quivering when a clerk scurried to pick them up. He would smash his foot into one of the booths so hard that it shook, and as he strode out of the cloakroom back entrance to collect himself in the corridor outside, the telephone area still vibrated with Lyndon Johnson's rage.

"Or," the clerk recalls, "he might look around the corner of Booth Ten to see if anyone was in the cloakroom that he wanted to work on." If there was, Lyndon Johnson would go over to him, to persuade in person.

The quarry might be seated on one of the leather couches that lined the cloakroom walls. They were low and soft---ideal locales for persuasion, in the words of the clerk "good places for him to pin a senator into so that he couldn't get away."

Approaching the senator, Johnson would lean over him, perhaps chatting amiably for a moment or two about inconsequential matters, but with his weight resting on one hand that had been placed on the back of the couch, close by the senator's shoulder. Then, switching to the real subject of the conversation, Johnson would sit down beside him. The hand would remain on the back of the couch, so that when Johnson, continuing to talk, leaned forward to look the senator more directly in the face, his arm would be stretched out beside the other man's head. In the urgency of his appeal, Johnson would lean further forward, sliding to the edge of his seat, and twist his body so it was more in front of the senator. Then he would cross the leg furthest from the senator over the knee closest to the other man. Already faced with the difficulty of pushing up from those deep, soft cushions, the senator would find the difficulty increased by the fact that not only was there a big arm like a bar on one side of him, but also a big leg like a bar in front of him. If the senator exhibited signs of restlessness, Johnson would grab the ankle of that leg with his free hand, so that there were in effect two bars in front of the senator, not to mention a size 11 shoe in front of his face; "the poor guy," the clerk notes, "couldn't get out."

With the senator's continued presence thus assured, the first Johnson arm, the one that had been resting on the back of the couch, would stretch along it, so that the senator was almost completely surrounded. And the trap would be tightened. As Johnson talked faster and faster, that heavy arm would come down around the senator's shoulders, hugging them. His hand would grasp the senator's shoulder firmly. He would lean further and further into him, the hand that had been on his own ankle now on the senator's knee or thigh. "I can still see those big meaty hands," the clerk would recall decades later. "One would be massaging the poor guy's shoulder, and the other one would be grabbing his leg. I can still see Johnson leaning into him." His face would be very close to the senator's now, pushing closer and closer, his head coming up under his companion's so that the senator's head was often forced back against the back of the couch. No matter how much he may have wanted to retreat further, he couldn't, and as he was held helpless, Johnson would talk faster and faster, pleading, cajoling, threatening.

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.