Larson's best and most enthralling work of novelistic history...rich with incident, populated by fascinating secondary characters, tinged with rising peril and pityingly persuasive...powerful, poignant...a transportingly true story.

Fascinating...using letters and diaries, Larson - a master at writing true tales as riveting as fiction - creates a nuanced, eyewitness account of a father and daughter whose eyes thankfully opened as the horrors closed in.

Reads like an elegant thriller...utterly compelling...an excellent and entertaining book that deserves to be a bestseller.

Compelling...the kind of book that brings history alive to readers and proves why Larson's Isaac's Storm and The Devil in the White City were such hits.

Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds' intimate witness to Hitler's ascendancy...has all the pleasures of a political thriller: innocents abroad, the gathering storm...a fresh picture of these terrible events.

A stunning work of history.

Larson writes history like a novelist. He presents a familiar story through fresh eyes, conveying quite wonderfully the electrically charged atmosphere of a whole society turning towards the stormy dark.

A compelling tale... a narrative that makes such a brave effort to see history as it evolves and not as it becomes.

Darkly enjoyable...his tale is well told

Gives the subject matter a fresh perspective... Larson paints a vivid picture of 1930s Berlin, a city spiraling into disaster. A master of mood, he manipulates the reader to the point that we find ourselves gripping on to every shard of hope, even to the extent of expecting the march of history to miraculously change course before our very eyes

The rise of Hitler is told through the eyes of William E Dodd, a Chicago academic who was made the first ambassador to Nazi Germany, in this compelling narrative history, which brings to life the terrible changes wrought on Germany by Hitler and his circle as they tightened their grip on power...

Wry but scholarly infotainment...One Summer wins you over by the sheer weight of its encylopedic enthusiasms...Bryson's winning love of the ridiculous finds a rich seam in charting the rise and fall of America's great men...there is tumultuous energy in this serio-hilarious fan letter. In short, it's a bit like America itself.

Bryson writes in a style as effervescent as the time itself...No one is immune to Bryson's irreverence...a wonderful romp.

Exuberant...he propels his story forward with enviable skill and inexhaustible verve...Byson's summer of 1927 seems like a boisterous American version of the British summerof 1913, another high point of that fabled innocence which America was always doomed to lose.

The T&Cs of a bank loan could be made eloquent in the hands of Bryson so with this rich material, the book sings.

My book of the year, by a landslide majority... Caro marries profound psychological insight with a brilliant eye for the drama of the times

A breathtakingly dramatic story [told] with consummate artistry and ardor... It showcases Mr Caro's masterly gifts as a writer: his propulsive sense of narrative, his talent for enabling readers to see and feel history in the making and his ability to situate his subjects’ actions within the context of their times… Taken together the installments of Mr Caro’s monumental life of Johnson so far not only create a minutely detailed picture of an immensely complicated and conflicted individual, but they also form a revealing prism by which to view the better part of a century in description of Johnson – and those of John and Robert Kennedy – have novelistic depth and amplitude… Mr Caro uses his storytelling gifts to turn seemingly arcane legislative maneuvers into action-movie suspense, and he gives us unparalleled understanding…of how Johnson used a crisis and his own political acumen to implement his agenda with stunning speed… Engrossing

It is the mismatch between Johnson’s fate prior to the assassination and his fate in its aftermath that gives this book, the fourth volume of Caro’s monumental biography, its compelling but also unfathomable flavor… Caro’s account of the day of the assassination… is a magnificent piece of writing. What might have seemed familiar becomes startlingly fresh, because it is seen from the perspective of the man whose destiny suddenly came back into focus as the world of those around him was falling apart.

Riveting... Shakespearean... It’s a rollercoaster narrative as Johnson plummets from the powerful Senate majority leader post to vice-presidential irrelevance, hated and humiliated by the Kennedy brothers, then surges to presidential authority with the crack of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle and forces a revolutionary civil rights act through a recalcitrant Congress... Caro’s tormented, heroic Johnson makes an apt embodiment of an America struggling toward epochal change, one with a fascinating resonance in our era of gridlocked government

Caro has once again shown that he might well be the greatest presidential historian we’ve ever had… Although the amount of research Caro has done for these books is staggering, it’s his immense talent as a writer that has made his biography of Johnson one of America’s most amazing literary achievements… Caro’s portrayal of the president is as scrupulously fair as it is passionate and deeply felt… The series is a masterpiece, unlike any other work of American history published in the past. It’s true that there will never be another Lyndon B. Johnson, but there will never be another Robert A. Caro, either. By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, he’s forever changed the way we think, and read, American history

The years of Lyndon Johnson, when completed, will rank as America’s most ambitiously conceived, assiduously researched and compulsively readable political biography… When Caro’s fifth volume arrives, reader’s gratitude will be exceeded only by their regret that there will not be a sixth

A great work of history… A great biography… Caro has summoned Lyndon Johnson to vivid, intimate life

The fourth volume of one of the most anticipated English-language biographies of the past 30 years... A compelling narrative...that will thrill those who care about American politics, the foundations of power, or both

Political biography of the highest quality… An unmatched psychological portrait of Johnson as John F. Kennedy’s assassination catapults him into the presidency

Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson is said to be on William Hague, George Osborne and Jeremy Hunt’s summer reading list

This book shows the mastery of Johnson in politics, and also the mastery of Caro in biography

A great and occasionally astonishing biography

One of the greatest biographies in the history of American letters

The latest in what is almost without question the greatest political biography in modern times… Nobody goes deeper, works harder or produces more penetrating insights than [Caro]

A major event in biography, history, even publishing itself… Caro has once more combined prodigious research and a literary gift to mount a stage for his Shakespearean figures: LBJ, JFK, LBJ’s nemesis Robert F. Kennedy

A masterly how-to manual, showing Johnson’s knowledge of governing, his peerless congressional maneuvering and effective deal-making. The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a compact library: brilliant biography, gripping history, searing political drama and an incomparable study of power. It’s also a great read… And, after thousands of pages spent with Lyndon Johnson, one of Caro’s singular achievements is that you want more

Brilliant… Riveting reading from beginning to end… The real tour de force in this stunning mix of political and psychological analysis comes in the account of the transition between administrations, from November 23 1963 to January 8, 1964… An utterly fascinating character study, brimming with delicious insider stories… Political wonks, of course, will dive into this book with unbridled passion, but its focus on a larger-than-life, flawed but fascinating individual – the kind of character who drives epic fiction – should extend its reach much, much further. Unquestionably, one of the truly big books of the year

The series’ crowning volume

This pile-driving book has all the ingredients of a great drama, the humiliating childhood breeding a lifelong desire (to be president), the failure (to gain the Democratic nomination), the humiliation (almost constant, by JF Kennedy) the sudden change of fate (the assassination), and the vindication (when Johnson drives through key bills that Kennedy couldn’t, and proves himself the most astute of politicians). Totally compelling

It is an extraordinary story of a deeply flawed character, told with such verve, such command of the facts, and such an understanding of power

A major work of history and biography

The fourth installation of Caro’s masterwork came out this year and, cheeringly, there is no slackening of plot or pace

It is a profound portrait of two men, Johnson and John F. Kennedy, and the relationship between them

A fascinating story, Shakespearean in its passion and fury, as well as darkly comical

This pile-driving book has all the ingredients of a great drama, the humiliating childhood breeding a lifelong desire (to be president), the failure (to gain the Democratic nomination), the humiliation (almost constant, by J. F. Kennedy) the sudden change of fate (the assassination), and the vindication (when Johnson drives through key bills that Kennedy couldn’t, and proves himself the most astute of politicians). Totally compelling

The fourth volume of Caro’s magisterial work spans the five years that end shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, as Johnson prepares to push for a civil rights

A meticulous dissection of political and economic structures in the US… a riveting read by one of the modern masters of historical writing