his congressional career almost before it began. - Robert A. Caro

A surprising number of representatives,” the Saturday Evening Post reported, “knew his hat and coat, when it hangs on its accustomed peg in the House restaurant” — a discreet reference to the fact that many Congressmen checked to see that he was present before they entered the restaurant, lest they be forced to pay for their meals themselves.

The city’s West Side was a gigantic slum, containing perhaps 60,000 residents, who were paid, Gunther says, “probably the lowest wages in the United States” — for pecan shellers (San Antonio was the “Pecan Capital of the World”) an average of $1.75 per week.

While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men — a great reader of men.