Portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson
Historian and journalist Robert A. Caro will release the fourth installment of his LBJ biographical series. Reuters

Journalist and biographer Robert A. Caro is coming out with the fourth installment of his biographical series of former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Passage of Power will be released on May 1, 2012, according to the Random House Web site.

Caro spoke about the upcoming book with The AP.

What do I want to show in this volume? he told The AP. I wanted to show how a master of politics can pick up the reins of power in a time of great crisis and what he can do with that power and the extraordinary results Lyndon Johnson did with it.

This particular installment will have a modern touch: it will be available as an e-book on the same day as its hardcover counterpart, The AP reported.

This is the work of a great biographer writing at the very height of his powers, Knopf chairman and editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta said in a statement. When I read the manuscript, I knew we had to publish this new book as quickly as possible. It is a riveting look at a pivotal period in our nation's history - told for the first time as only Caro is capable of doing. His research is peerless; his knowledge of history exceptional; and his gifts for telling a story unrivaled. This book will be hailed as one of his finest works.

There will be a fifth volume to the series, although there is no timetable for it yet, Mehta said in a statement.

Caro is also the author of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.

His previous volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson series are The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and Master of the Senate.

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