It is as compelling and comprehensive as its reputation, tho my hunch is Caro is more astute about political power than he is about personal power (he has some maybe ‘of his time’ ideas about Johnson dominating the personality of weaker men). Apparently when Nixon read it, he said ‘it makes Johnson seem like a goddam animal… which he was!’ And Caro does seem disgusted by Johnson’s character, especially in the early chapters (and he devotes a few paragraphs to Johnson’s habit of making people take dictation off him while he was shitting). But the flip side of the coin, in the New Deal chapters, is a rigorous evocation of how government can get stuff done and change people’s lives. The chapter about how electricity was brought to rural Texas and Johnson’s role in getting that done (at least for his own district) makes a case for the whole book.