The high point of my reading life was listening to the audio Caro books. In a book review, George Will somewhat derogatorily called the Caro style "incantatory", with Caro's relentless repetition of metaphors such as the "dam" of Southern Democrats holding back Civil Rights, and phrases such as the "three R's" of Roosevelt, Rayburn, Russell. But it is this incantatory style that makes the writing spring to life in audio. And, yes, you can make your way through them while doing laundry or driving to work.

Agree. The Audible versions of The Power Broker and the LBJ books have excellent narration.

If it's the epub passed around different corners of the web, then it's not worth sharing. The formatting is garbage. One is better off reading the book in print.

> The book is an epic story closer to a Tolstoy novel than a mere biography. It’s about a city and a man’s impact on the city. It’s about all of the people whose lives he benefited and whose lives he ruined. Without that sense of scale, the ending doesn’t work. You don’t have time to build sympathy for Moses and to slowly lose that sympathy. And to finally finish with that conflicted love, hate, pity, and awe that I left the book with.

I don’t disagree with any of this.

> All the details matter.

This is where we disagree. I think 30-50% of the book could be cut and you’d still be able to accomplish everything in the first quote above.

What's the necessity of making biographies read like fiction?

It’s too bad, because the nature of that grass created the economic conditions of Johnson’s early life