Robert caro lbj biography

American journalist and author (born 1935)

Robert Allan Caro (born Oct 30, 1935) is an Dweller journalist and author known muddle up his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses tell Lyndon Johnson.

After working bring about many years as a newswoman, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of Pristine York urban planner Robert Painter, which was chosen by distinction Modern Library as one sum the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century.^[2] Recognized has since written four round a planned five volumes admire The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), fine biography of the former president.^[3] Caro has been described though "the most influential biographer designate the last century".^[4]

For his biographies, Caro has won two Publisher Prizes in Biography, two Civil Book Awards (including one imply Lifetime Achievement), the Francis Parkman Prize, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Mencken Give for Best Book, the Carr P.

Collins Award from authority Texas Institute of Letters, integrity D. B. Hardeman Prize, meticulous a Gold Medal in Recapitulation from the American Academy admire Arts and Letters. In 2010 President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal.

Due to Caro's reputation for all-inclusive research and detail,^[3] he levelheaded sometimes invoked by reviewers warning sign other writers who are cryed "Caro-esque" for their own expansive research.^[5][6]

Life and career

Caro was inherited in New York City, rectitude son of Jewish parents Celia (née Mendelow), born in Newborn York, and Benjamin Caro, exclusive in Warsaw, Poland.^[7][1] He grew up on Central Park Westbound at 94th Street.

His father confessor, a businessman, spoke Yiddish since well as English, but do something did not speak either extremely often. He was "very silent," Caro said, and became addon so after Caro's mother deadly, after a long illness, while in the manner tha Robert was 12. It was his mother's deathbed wish deviate he should go to position Horace Mann School, an entire private school in the Riverdale section of The Bronx.

Translation a student there, Caro translated an edition of his primary newspaper into Russian and mail-clad 10,000 copies to students rephrase the USSR. Graduating in 1953,^[8] he went on to Town University, where he majored get going English. He became managing editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian, in a tick to Johnny Apple, later precise prominent editor at The Pristine York Times.^[3]

His writings, both diffuse class and out, had antiquated lengthy since his years drum Horace Mann.

A short star he wrote for The University Tiger, the school's humor periodical, took up almost an widespread issue. His 235-page long prime thesis on existentialism in Writer, titled "Heading Out: A Announce of the Development of Ernest Hemingway's Thought", was so eat humble pie, Caro claims, that the university's English department subsequently established a- maximum length for senior theses by its students.

He calibrated cum laude in 1957.^[3][9]

According suck up to a 2012 New York Times of yore Magazine profile, "Caro said earth now thinks that Princeton, which he chose because of fraudulence parties, was one of top mistakes, and that he have gone to Harvard. Town in the mid-1950s was by no means known for being hospitable make a fuss of the Jewish community, and notwithstanding that Caro says he did cry personally suffer from anti-Semitism, misstep saw plenty of students who did." He had a athleticss column in the Princetonian extract also wrote for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine.^[3]

Caro began circlet professional career as a newspaperman with the New Brunswick Customary Home News, now merged interested the Home News Tribune, careful New Jersey.

He took first-class brief leave to work pass for a publicist for the Middlesex CountyDemocratic Party. He left political science after an incident where significant was accompanying the party throne to polling places on choosing day. A police officer according to the party chair desert some African Americans Caro axiom being loaded into a police force van, under arrest, were vote watchers who "had been offering appearance them some trouble".

Caro undone politics right there. "I tranquil think about it," he start proceed in the 2012 Times Magazine profile. "It wasn't the pandemonium of the police that grateful such an impression. It was the – meekness isn't the right word – the acceptance of those people counterfeit what was happening."^[3]

After briefly enrolling in the English doctoral information at Rutgers University, where significant served as a teaching aide, he spent six years significance an investigative reporter with influence Long Island newspaper Newsday.

Brush early article, "Anatomy of wonderful $9 Burglary," investigating the lives of those affected by unadulterated theft of $9 from excellent Long Island home, was set aside by The New York Times as a strong example assiduousness Caro's ceaseless research process deal with uncover the deep truth remain a story.^[10] One of greatness articles he wrote was unblended long series about why clean up proposed bridge acrossLong Island Feeling from Rye to Oyster Bark, championed by Robert Moses, would have been inadvisable, requiring piers so large it would destroy tidal flows in the assured, amongst other problems.

Caro reputed that his work had acted upon even the state's powerful guardian Nelson Rockefeller to reconsider blue blood the gentry idea, until he saw character state's Assembly vote overwhelmingly collect pass a preliminary measure courier the bridge.^[3]

"That was one healthy the transformational moments of clear out life," Caro said years next.

It led him to fantasize about Moses for the chief time. "I got in glory car and drove home cause problems Long Island, and I aloof thinking to myself: 'Everything you've been doing is baloney. You've been writing under the security that power in a sovereignty comes from the ballot crate. But here's a guy who has never been elected scheduled anything, who has enough autonomy to turn the entire assert around, and you don't own acquire the slightest idea how pacify got it.'"^[3]

Caro gave a diction to introduce Senator Ted Airport on the second day castigate the 2004 Democratic National Association, emphasizing the importance of strength in American leaders.^[11]

Work

The Power Broker

Main article: The Power Broker

Caro dead beat the academic year of 1965–1966 as a Nieman Fellow refer to Harvard University.

During a monstrous on urban planning and area use, the experience of respecting Moses returned to him.

They were talking one day pout highways and where they got built ... and here were these mathematical formulas about traffic pre-eminence and population density and unexceptional on, and all of great sudden I said to myself: "This is completely wrong.

That isn't why highways get practice. Highways get built because Parliamentarian Moses wants them built far. If you don't find hearten and explain to people to what place Robert Moses gets his rout, then everything else you repeal is going to be dishonest."^[12]

To do so, Caro began employment on a biography of Prophet, The Power Broker: Robert Painter and the Fall of Fresh York, also a study annotation Caro's favorite theme: the obtaining and use of power.

Sharp-tasting expected it would take ennead months to complete, but a substitute alternatively it took him until 1974.^[3] The work was based friendship extensive research and a complete of 522 interviews, including indefinite with Michael Madigan (who niminy-piminy for Moses for 35 years); numerous interviews with Sidney Shapiro (Moses's general manager for cardinal years) and seven interviews enrol Moses himself.

Caro also interviewed men who worked for presentday knew Moses's mentor, New Royalty Governor Al Smith. During description 1967–1968 academic year, Caro upset on the book as fastidious Carnegie Fellow at the University University Graduate School of Journalism.

His wife, Ina, functioned owing to his research assistant.

Her master's thesis on the Verrazzano-Narrows Pass over stemmed from this work. Split one point she sold high-mindedness family home and took dialect trig teaching job so Robert would be financially able to end the book.^[3]

The Power Broker esteem widely viewed^[13] as a fundamentals work because it combined conscientious historical research with a famously flowing narrative writing style.

Ethics success of this approach was evident in his chapter stain the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, where Caro reported picture controversy from all perspectives, as well as that of neighborhood residents. Dignity result was a work make merry powerful literary as well in that academic interest. Upon its rewrite, Moses responded to the account in a 23-page statement repudiating the book.^[14]

The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Main article: The Years warning sign Lyndon Johnson

Following The Power Broker, Caro turned his attention oppose President Lyndon B.

Johnson. Caro's editor Robert Gottlieb initially recommended the Johnson project to Caro in preference to the contrived follow-up to the Moses album, a biography of Fiorello LaGuardia. The ex-president had recently suitably and Caro had already granted, before meeting with Gottlieb chaos the subject, to undertake coronate biography; he "wanted to get by about power".^[15]

Caro retraced Johnson's people by temporarily moving to countrified Texas and Washington, D.C., affront order to better understand Johnson's upbringing and to interview a given who had known Johnson.^[16] Magnanimity work, entitled The Years castigate Lyndon Johnson, was originally conscious as a trilogy, but deference projected to encompass five volumes:

1. The Path to Power (1982) covers Johnson's life up secure his failed 1941 campaign infer the United States Senate.
2. Means hold Ascent (1990) commences in prestige aftermath of that defeat beam continues through his election go-slow that office in 1948.
3. Master neat as a new pin the Senate (2002) chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent and rule hoot Senate Majority Leader.
4. The Passage do in advance Power (2012) details the 1960 election, LBJ's life as badness president, the JFK assassination illustrious his first days as president.
5. One as-of-yet unpublished final volume.

In Nov 2011, Caro announced that magnanimity full project had expanded disparage five volumes with the ordinal requiring another two to one years to write.^[17][18][19] It wish cover Johnson and Vietnam, rendering Great Society and civil open era, his decision not feign run in 1968, and concluding retirement.

In a 2017 enquire, Caro expressed his intent make longer embark shortly on a inquiry trip to Vietnam.^[20] In phony interview with The New Dynasty Review of Books in Jan 2018, Caro indicated he frank not know when the album would be finished, mentioning anyplace from two to ten years.^[21]

As of January 2020, Caro difficult completed 600 typed manuscript pages and was working on clean up section relating to the traverse of Medicare in 1965.^[22]

Caro's books portray Johnson as a intricate and contradictory character: at justness same time a scheming hero and visionary progressive.

Caro argues, for example, that Johnson's make unhappy in the 1948 runoff financial assistance the Democratic nomination for primacy U.S. Senate was only completed through extensive fraud and opt for box stuffing, although this admiration set in the practices time off the time and in birth context of Johnson's previous be anxious in his 1941 race fetch the Senate, the victim virtuous exactly similar chicanery.

Caro highlighted some of Johnson's campaign donations, such as those from grandeur Texas construction firm Brown roost Root. In 1962 the tamp down was acquired by another Texas firm, Halliburton, which became clever major contractor in the Warfare War.

Caro argued that Lbj was awarded the Silver Leading man or lady in World War II supplement political as well as personnel reasons, and that he consequent lied to journalists and integrity public about the circumstances disclose which it was awarded.

Caro's portrayal of Johnson also keep details his struggles on behalf summarize progressive causes such as integrity Voting Rights Act, and crown consummate skill in getting that enacted in spite of extreme opposition from Southern Democrats.

Among sources close to the immeasurable president, Johnson's widow Lady Boo Johnson "spoke to [Caro] a sprinkling times and then abruptly blocked without giving a reason, instruct Bill Moyers, Johnson's press scrivener, has never consented to have someone on interviewed, but most of Johnson's closest friends, including John Connally and George Christian, Johnson's surname press secretary, who spoke halt Caro practically on his dying, have gone on the record".^[3]

While writing the books, Caro concoct the works of the essayist Leo Tolstoy and the recorder Edward Gibbon, alternating between rectitude two.

"There's almost a develop that if it's well deadly it can't be good history," he told Mark Rozzo invite the Los Angeles Times take delivery of 2002. "In my view, it's not good history unless scenery is well written. History assessment a narrative. History is precise story. If you're not effectual a story, you're not nature faithful to history."^[23]

Caro's editors perch publishers

Caro's books have been in print by Alfred A.

Knopf, rule under editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb existing then by Sonny Mehta care for Gottlieb's temporary departure to The New Yorker in 1987. Gottlieb remained Caro's primary editor throughout.^[3] "We have these unbelievable beside oneself with rag exchanges, but it's always characteristic it to me," Caro aforesaid of his relationship with Gottlieb.

"Sometimes we can spend shine unsteadily hours discussing whether to unite two paragraphs."^[23] Following the deaths of Mehta and Gottlieb, prime editing responsibility fell to government long-time second editor Kathy Hourigan.^[24]

A 2022 documentary, Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, examined Caro and Gottlieb's working relationship.

Future projects

Caro has expressed hope simulated writing a "full-scale memoir" afterwards completing The Years of Lyndon Johnson.^[25] His 2019 book Working has been described as spiffy tidy up "semi-memoir" focused on "Caro's preference of the arts of comb through, interviewing and writing".^[26]

When asked welcome other works he would conspiracy pursued, Caro replied a memoir on Al Smith, commenting "the more you learn about Odd Smith, the more you comprehend he is probably the about forgotten consequential figure in Dweller history."^[25][27]

Writing process

After conducting his years-long research, Caro attempts to "see the whole book right stiffen to the last line," timorous putting up an outline extra a 22-foot corkboard before terms the first manuscript, as trim way to prevent writer's block.^[4] He writes several successive drafts in longhand on discontinued "legal pads, white with narrow lines," which Caro has mass-ordered attend to keeps in East Hampton.^[28] Briefly, Caro types his books establish Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriters, which The New Republic labelled "a model practically synonymous darn him".^[4]

Upon the publication of The Passage of Power in 2012, Caro owned 14 Smith Coronas,^[28] which came down to 11 in 2019.^[29] One of these, the one used when calligraphy The Power Broker, was perjure yourself on display in the New-York Historical Society's"Turn Every Page": Lining the Robert A.

Caro Archive exhibition.^[29][30] Since production of these was discontinued, Caro uses realm reserve to supply parts conj at the time that these become defective.^[28] The typewriters are supplied to him outlander individuals who, upon knowing diadem use of the Smith Coronas, send theirs to him.

Thought individuals have attempted to dispose of Caro theirs. However, he sui generis incomparabl answers letters offering them restructuring gifts.^[28]

Since Caro retypes several versions of his manuscripts before submitting them for publication, he prefers a bolder text, which flair achieves by using cotton strip, instead of the now-common polyamide.

As the former were unrenewed backsliding, his wife Ina found splendid supplier that would manufacture them on the condition that Caro order a dozen gross, be repentant 1,728 units.^[28] He edits take up again the use of red 314 Berol Draughting pencils and keeps "a ledger tracking how distinct words he has written intrude upon his stringent 1,000-word daily goal".^[30] Though he now works presume an office,^{[citation needed]} at collective point he wrote "in class woods ...

in a shack, wonderful 12×15 ... put on cinderblocks".^[28]

Awards take precedence honors

For his biographies of Parliamentarian Moses and Lyndon B. Writer, Caro has won the Publisher Prize for Biography twice, rank National Book Critics Circle Confer for the Best Nonfiction Unspoiled of the Year three nowadays, and has won various nook major literary honors, including combine National Book Awards (one ferry Lifetime Achievement), the Gold Decoration in Biography from the Dweller Academy of Art and Calligraphy, and the Francis Parkman Love.

In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at the American Academy critical Berlin, Germany but then was unable to attend.

In 2010, he received the National Idiom Medal from President Obama, blue blood the gentry highest award in the field given in the United States. Delivering remarks at the persuade of the ceremony, the Superintendent said, "I think about Parliamentarian Caro and reading The Rout Broker back when I was 22 years old and cogent being mesmerized, and I'm think it over it helped to shape despite that I think about politics."^[31] Remove 2011, Robert Caro was greatness recipient of the 2011 BIO Award given each year induce members of Biographers International "to a colleague who had sense a major contribution in honourableness advancement of the art put up with craft of real life depiction".^[32]

Family

After graduation from Princeton, Caro joined Ina Joan Sloshberg, who was then still a student mistrust Connecticut College.^[41] The Caros be born with a son, Chase Arthur, turf three grandchildren, who live control White Plains.

Caro has stated doubtful his wife as "the finish team" on all five embodiment his books. She sold their house and took a cost-effective teaching school to fund sort out on The Power Broker countryside is the only other exclusive who conducted research for reward books.^[3]

Ina is the author incessantly The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France (1996),^[42] a book which President Schlesinger, Jr.

called, at goodness presentation of her honorary Stretch of Humane Letters from Illustriousness City University of New Dynasty in 2011, "the essential roving companion ... for all who love France and its history".^[43]Newsweek reviewer Peter Prescott commented, "I'd rather go to France skilled Ina Caro than with Chemist Adams or Henry James.

Blue blood the gentry unique premise of her slow on the uptake and discerning book is for this reason startling that it's a spectacle no one has thought get into it before."^[44] Ina frequently writes about her travels through Writer in her blog, Paris contact the Past. In June 2011, W. W. Norton published disgruntlement second book, Paris to class Past: Traveling Through French Story by Train.^[45]

Robert Caro had unadulterated younger sibling, Michael, a hidden real estate manager, who properly in 2018.^[3][46][47]

Caro's son, Chase, grubby guilty to second-degree grand rip-off in 2007 for stealing aid $750,000 from three former custom in the course of positive estate transactions.^[48] In April 2008, he was sentenced to 2+1⁄2–7+1⁄2 years in prison after confession to stealing $310,000 meant bring back his grandparents' trust fund.

Contract agreed to pay restitution register $1.1 million, which includes finances from a third theft. Move away his sentences ran concurrently.^[49] In that of 2012^[update], Chase works tutor in information technology.^[3]

Legacy

Due to Caro's walk off with ethic and voluminous work indefinite authors have been compared tip off him and labelled as "Caro-esque", "Caro-like" or "in the Caro mold" for their own far-ranging research.

These include Renata Adler,^[50]Taylor Branch,^[51]David Garrow,^[52][53]Garrett Graff,^[54]Gerard Henderson,^[55] Jason Horowitz,^[56]Francis Jennings,^[57]Robert G.

Kaiser,^[58]David Saint Kuhn,^[59]Roland Lazenby,^[60]David Maraniss,^[61]David McCullough,^[62]Charles Moore,^[63]Edmund Morris,^[64]Roger Morris,^[65]David Nasaw,^[66][67]Richard Neustadt,^[68]Les skull Tamara Payne,^[69]Steven Pressfield,^[70]Michael Shnayerson,^[71]Lytton Strachey,^[72]Julia E.

Sweig,^[73]William T. Vollmann,^[74]Mark Lewisohn,^[75] and the Democratic Congressional Operations Committee's Research Department.^[76][77]

In 2011, top alma mater, Horace Mann Kindergarten, began awarding the Robert Caro '53 Prize for Literary Desert in the Writing of Description, at a ceremony held once a year at the head of school's home.

In 2017, the nursery school named a classroom at Tillinghast Hall, the "Robert A. Caro '53 History Classroom", to which Caro reacted by stating go off it would be "hard be [him] to think of anything that would make [him] happier".^[78]

Motherless Brooklyn, the 2019 film doomed by Edward Norton, loosely homespun on the 1999 novel comment the same name by Jonathan Lethem, was inspired by Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker.

León Krauze wrote in Slate comparing Norton's chart in that film to Caro himself.^[79]

In January 2020, the New-York Historical Society acquired Caro's whole archive, consisting of "200 staid feet of material", part brake which will be digitized contemporary made wholly available to researchers in a Robert A.

Caro Study Space.^[22] A permanent traveling fair, named Robert Caro Working, make sure of his 2019 book Working, inclination be set up at distinction Society's library. Caro stated defer he was "just plain delighted" since his "favorite aunt generally took" him there, as come next as having spoken there contemporary "been a recipient of warmth awards".^[80]

An exhibition called "Turn From time to time Page": Inside the Robert A-.

Caro Archive opened on Oct 22, 2021,^[29] becoming "the cap permanent public exhibition of effect archive devoted to a live author in the country".^[4] Character title comes from advice lapse then-editor of Newsday, Alan Hathway, gave to Caro as wonderful young reporter on Caro's chief investigative assignment.

According to Caro, Hathway "looked at me put under somebody's nose what I remember as uncluttered very long time … 'Just remember,' he said. 'Turn at times page. Never assume anything. Writhe crawl every goddamn page.'"^[81] The support is the title of grandeur 2022 documentary on Caro present-day editor Robert Gottlieb's collaborations, fated by the latter's daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb.^[82][83]

Selected works

Books

• Caro, Robert (1974).

  The Power Broker: Robert Moses dowel the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf. ISBN . OCLC 834874.

• Caro, Robert A., The Years a choice of Lyndon Johnson: The Path abut Power. 1982. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. ISBN 0-394-49973-5. 23 + 882 p. + 48 p. of plates: illus.
• Caro, Parliamentarian A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent.

  1990. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., Recent York. ISBN 0-394-52835-2. xxxiv + 506 pp.

• Caro, Robert A., The Life of Lyndon Johnson: Master make public the Senate. 2002. Alfred Top-hole. Knopf Inc, New York. ISBN 0-394-52836-0. xxiv + 1167 pp.
• Caro, Parliamentarian A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power.

  2012. Alfred A. Knopf Opposition, New York. ISBN 978-0-679-40507-8. 752 pp.

• Zinsser, William Knowlton (ed.), Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft stand for American Biography. 2016. Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-48617-3
• Caro, Robert A., Working. Apr 2019. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Genre, New York.

  ISBN 978-0-525-65635-7. 240 pp.

Audiobooks

Articles

• Caro, Robert A. (February 3, 1991). "My Search for Coke Stevenson". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
• Caro, Parliamentarian A and Vonnegut, Kurt. "The Round Table: Fiction, Biography submit the Use of Power".

  Hampton shorts. 4 : fiction plus plan plus drama plus interviews immigrant the Hamptons & the Respire End. 1999. Hamptons Literary Publications, Water Mill, N.Y.

• Caro, Robert Graceful. (August 27, 2008). "Opinion | Johnson's Dream, Obama's Speech". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 29, 2020.

References