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

Some took place in the Chamber, on the Senate floor---on that floor on which, for generations, the prevailing pace had been the slow, hesitant steps of old men, on which the prevailing attitude had been the extremely dignified, or over-dignified, senatorial pomposity, on which the prevailing parliamentary procedure had often seemed to be the quorum call, the prevailing sound the drone of insignificant rituals.

Now Lyndon Johnson was in charge of that floor. One moment he would be sitting down beside Kerr or Anderson on one of the couches in the rear of the Chamber, the next, he was up buttonholing a senator who had just entered, joking with him, draping an arm around his shoulders, and then talking confidentially to him, bending close to his ear. Then, seeing another senator come in, he would be off to greet him, crossing the long Chamber. He would be throwing himself into the chair next to Richard Russell and talking with him out of the side of his mouth, or sitting down next to Walter George, and, leaning forward, be bringing him up to date on the activities of the day, or, jumping up, would be heading across to another senator. Sometimes he would throw himself down in his own chair, and, stretching his long legs out into the center aisle, or crossing them, would lean far back into the chair and slouch down until he seemed to be resting on the nape of his neck and the small of his back. He might sit like that, lost in thought, for several minutes. And then, having arrived at some decision, he would lunge up out of the chair and stride rapidly over to some senator and begin talking to him.

Even standing still, Lyndon Johnson was somehow always in motion, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, restlessly shifting his shoulders, one big hand plunging into a pants pocket to jingle coins or the keys on his big key ring, the other scratching his back---or scratching other parts of his body, too, for some of the motions Lyndon Johnson made front-row center on the great stage of the Senate floor were those intimate motions that embarrassed other men even in the relative privacy of Johnson's office. The reporters in the Press Gallery would nudge each other and giggle when, jamming a hand into a side pocket of his pants, the Leader quite openly scratched his crotch, bending one leg and leaning far over as he did so, one shoulder much lower than the other, the better to reach hard-to-reach recesses of his body; sometimes, taking out his inhaler, he would tilt his head so far back that he was staring straight up at the ceiling, and shoving the inhaler far up his nose, he would snort so vigorously as he inhaled that the snorts were clearly audible up in the Gallery. Sometimes, standing there, he might jam both hands into his pockets and rise up on his toes as he glanced around the Chamber with that air of command.

As the day wore on and the routine business was disposed of, and the crucial votes began to loom closer, his conversations would take on more intensity. Grasping a senator's arm, he would take him off to the side of the Chamber for a quiet talk. One of his arms would be firmly around his colleague's shoulders, and after a while, his other hand would begin to jab, jab toward the other senator as he made his points. The jabs would no longer stop in midair; Lyndon Johnson's long forefinger would begin to poke into the other senator's chest. Or that hand---the other arm would still be around the shoulders, lest the senator try to get away---would reach out and take the senator's lapel, gently at first, but then harder, grabbing the lapel, pulling the senator closer or pushing him back. And Lyndon Johnson's big head would be down in the other senator's face, or, twisting and cocking, coming up into that face from below.

And he would be moving faster and faster, throwing himself down into a chair beside one senator to whisper urgently to him for a moment, then bounding up the steps to talk to another at the rear of the Chamber, then, seeing another on the far side of the Chamber, crossing the center aisle, hurrying through the Republican desks with those long strides, leaning forward in his haste. Or he would beckon Bobby Baker over to him, lean far down to whisper right in Baker's ear so that no one else could possibly hear, and Baker would dart away. Or Baker would rush out of the cloakroom and over to Johnson and whisper up into his ear, and Johnson would rush up to the cloakroom. "And even if he was just standing there jingling the coins, you couldn't take your eyes off him," says Robert Barr of U.S. News & World Report. "If you were a spectator and you didn't know who he was, you would wonder [who he was]---because of this unbelievable restless energy that emanated from him." The Senate Chamber which had been so sleepy and slow, was now, suddenly, a room filled with energy and passion.

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.