Jonathan Alter's 6 favorite books

Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist and television analyst. He spent 28 years at Newsweek, where he was a longtime senior editor and columnist and wrote more than 50 cover stories. He has also written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic and other publications. Since 1996, Alter has been an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. His 2010 book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, went to #4 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List and was one of the Times' "Notable Books" of the year. The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, published in 2006, was also a bestseller.

One of his six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro

The third of (so far) four volumes on "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" unpacks the debate leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, an important precursor to the major civil-rights bills of the 1960s. Caro's account brings congressional sausage-making alive like no other book.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue