Lbj biography robert caro
In the Shack With Robert Caro
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The Power Broker is turning The final LBJ book is almost — well, he won’t say. But he’s trying for words a day.
Photo: Jonas Fredwall Karlsson
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As I arrive at Robert Caro’s house, down a rutted, unpaved road in East Hampton, he asks me whether I’d hit any traffic on the Long Island Expressway. I had, and I remark that I’m here to talk about the man who made that happen. Caro offers a wry smile and some coffee, and even before we sit down, we get into a conversation about Robert Moses and the Long Island landscape of potato farms and old estates that his highways converted into exurbs. Caro, of course, grew famous with his first book, The Power Broker, the definitive biography of Moses and the auto-centric New York City he created through unelected iron rule. On September 16, The Power Broker will turn 50, and the New-York Historical Society is marking the anniversary with an exhibition. Even now, Caro can spin off many of the book’s revelations without looking anything up. He reminds me that, when Moses built the LIE, everyone told him to acquire an extra 40 feet of right-of-way to accommodate a light-rail line. The extra land, back then, would have cost little. “He wouldn’t do it. And he built the foundations so lightly that it could never be added.” A few generations later, Long Islanders collectively lose millions of hours to that decision every day.
When I ask him how long he’s had the East Hampton place, Caro tosses off an answer that any writer can appreciate: “ Second volume. The first one was the apartment in the city.” He means the payouts from the first two parts of the epic biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson, on which he’s been working since It’s an airy house with a nice deck and a sparkling pool, but we’re headed out back, down a flagstone path, to converse in th
Robert Caro
American journalist and author (born )
Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, ) is an American journalist and author known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson.
After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote The Power Broker (), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, which was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He has since written four of a planned five volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (, , , ), a biography of the former president. Caro has been described as "the most influential biographer of the last century".
For his biographies, Caro has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, two National Book Awards (including one for Lifetime Achievement), the Francis Parkman Prize, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Mencken Award for Best Book, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the D. B. Hardeman Prize, and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal.
Due to Caro's reputation for exhaustive research and detail, he is sometimes invoked by reviewers of other writers who are called "Caro-esque" for their own extensive research.
Life and career
Caro was born in New York City, the son of Jewish parents Celia (née Mendelow), born in New York, and Benjamin Caro, born in Warsaw, Poland. He grew up on Central Park West at 94th Street. His father, a businessman, spoke Yiddish as well as English, but he did not speak either very often. He was "very silent," Caro said, and became more so after Caro's mother died, after a long illness, when Robert was It was his mother's deathbed wish that he should go to the Horace Mann School, an exclusive private school in the Riverdale sect Robert Caro is simply one of the greatest American historians. He has used libraries and archives extensively to paint the most vividly illuminating portrait of American politics and society in the 20th century through his biographies on Robert Moses and Lyndon B Johnson. Everywhere acknowledged as a modern American classic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, The Power Broker is a huge and galvanizing biography revealing not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power, but the story of the shaping (and mis-shaping) of New York in the twentieth century. Read More The Years of Lyndon Johnson One of the richest, most intensive and most revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American president. It is the magnum opus of a writer perfectly suited to his task. The Years of Lyndon Johnson is the political biography of our time. No president—no era of American politics—has been so intensively and sharply examined at a time when so many prime witnesses to hitherto untold or misinterpreted facets of a life, a career, and a period of history could still be persuaded to speak. Read More Here, Johnson’s almost mythic personality—part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculating—is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his campaign for the Senate-the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut-through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it) Biography series by Robert Caro Covers of the four published books of the series The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson by the American writer Robert Caro. Four volumes have been published, running to more than 3, pages in total, detailing Johnson's early life, education, and political career. A fifth volume, which is currently being written, is expected to deal with the bulk of Johnson's presidency and post-presidential years. The series is published by Alfred A. Knopf. In the first volume, The Path to Power, Caro retraced Johnson's early life growing up in the Texas Hill Country and working in Washington, D.C. first as a congressional aide and then as a congressman. Caro's research included renting a house in the Hill Country for three years, living there much of that time, to interview numerous people who knew Johnson and his family, and to better understand the environment in which Johnson had grown up. This volume covers Johnson's life through his failed campaign for the United States Senate. This book was released on November 12, It won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, hardcover autobiography or biography. In the second volume, Means of Ascent, Caro detailed Johnson's life from the aftermath of Johnson's first bid for the U.S. Senate in to his election to the Senate in Much of the book deals with Johnson's bitterly contested Democratic primary against Coke R. Stevenson in that year and the Box 13 scandal. The book was released on March 7, Main article: Master of the Senate In the third volume, Master of the Senate, Caro chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent in the United States Congress, including his tenure as Senate majority leader. This 1,page work examines in particular Johnson's b
Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden on awarding the Bodley Medal to Robert Caro
The Power Broker
The Path to Power
Means of Ascent
The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Book One: The Path to Power ()
Book Two: Means of Ascent ()
Book Three: Master of the Senate ()