Robert Caro

Robert Caro
Born	Robert Allan Caro October 30, 1935 (1935-10-30) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Biographer
Nationality	American
Genres	Non-fiction
Notable work(s)	The Power Broker The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Spouse(s)	Ina Caro
www.robertacaro.com

Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and author known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson. After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, and chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He then wrote The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), a planned five-volume biography of the former president. For his biographies he has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, the National Book Award, The Francis Parkman Prize (awarded by the society of American Historian to the book that "best exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist") two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the H.L. Mencken Award, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and an Award in Literature and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Biography

He was born on October 30, 1935. In 1953, Caro graduated from the Horace Mann School, where he was known for translating an edition of his school newspaper into Russian and mailing 10,000 copies to schoolboys in the USSR. In 1957, he received a degree in English from Princeton University. While at Princeton, he was managing editor of The Daily Princetonian. He was a Carnegie Fellow at Columbia University and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He began his professional career as a reporter with the New Brunswick Daily Home News (now merged into the Home News Tribune) in New Jersey. He also spent six years as an investigative reporter with the Long Island, New York newspaper Newsday. In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany but then was unable to attend. On February 25, 2010 President Obama awarded Caro the nation's highest award in the Humanities, The National Humanities Medal. Delivering remarks at the end of the ceremony the President said, "I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was 22 years old and just being mesmerized, and I'm sure it helped to shape how I think about politics." On April 10, 2010, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.

The Power Broker

Main article: The Power Broker

After spending the academic year of 1966-1967 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Caro began work on his first book, The Power Broker, which is both a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses and a study of Caro's favorite theme, the acquisition and use of power. Not finished until 1974, the work was based on extensive research and 522 interviews, including seven interviews with Moses himself, several with Michael Madigan (who worked for Moses for thirty-five years); and numerous interviews with Sidney Shapiro (Moses's General Manager for forty years); as well as interviews with men who worked for and knew Moses’s mentor, New York Governor Al Smith. His wife Ina Caro functioned as his research assistant. In fact, her master's thesis on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge stemmed from this work. The Power Broker was a critical success, winning the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best "exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist," and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

The Power Broker is widely viewed^{[citation needed]} as a seminal work because it combined painstaking historical research with a smoothly flowing narrative writing style. The success of this approach was evident in his chapter on the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, where Caro reported the controversy from all perspectives, including that of neighborhood residents. The result was a work of powerful literary as well as academic interest.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Main article: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Following this success, Caro turned his attention to Lyndon B. Johnson. Caro retraced Johnson's life by temporarily moving to rural Texas and Washington, D.C., in order to better understand Johnson's upbringing and to interview anyone who had known Johnson. The work, entitled The Years of Lyndon Johnson, is projected to run to five volumes. The first, The Path to Power (1982) covers Johnson's life up to his failed 1941 campaign for the United States Senate. It won a National Book Critics Circle Award, 1983, a Washington Monthly Best Political Book Award, 1983, and an H.L. Mencken Award. The second volume, Means of Ascent (1990), commences in the aftermath of that defeat and continues through his election to that office in 1948. This volume won a National Book Critics Circle Award, 1990, and Washington Monthly Best Political Book Award, 1990. The third and most recent published volume, Master of the Senate (2002) chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent and rule as Senate Majority Leader; it garnered Caro a second Pulitzer Prize in Biography as well as a National Book Award, a Carl Sandburg Award, a John Steinbeck Award and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Times of London wrote "Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age."

In November 2011, it was announced that the fourth volume, tentatively titled The Passage of Power, would be released in May 2012, covering LBJ's life from 1958 to 1964, and that the full project had expanded to five volumes, with the fifth volume requiring another two to three years to write.

Caro's books portray Johnson alternatively as a scheming opportunist and visionary progressive. Caro argued, for example, that Johnson's victory in the 1948 runoff for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate was only achieved through extensive fraud and ballot box stuffing. Caro also highlighted some of Johnson's campaign contributions, such as those from the Texas construction firm Brown and Root; in 1962 the company was acquired by another Texas firm, Halliburton, which became a major contractor in the Vietnam War. In addition, Caro argued that Johnson was awarded the Silver Star in World War II mainly for political reasons, and that he later lied to journalists and the public about the circumstances for which it was awarded. Caro's portrayal of Johnson also notes his struggles on behalf of progressive causes such as the Voting Rights Act.

Awards

For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and has won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters,awarded once every five years, and the Francis Parkman Prize. In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, the highest award in the humanities given in this country. In 2011, Robert Caro will be the recipient of the 2011 BIO Award given each year by members of Biographers International "to a colleague who had made a major contribution in the advancement of the art and craft of real life depiction." 2010—the National Humanities Medal. 2010—Inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. 2003—The Pulitzer Prize for Biography (Master of the Senate). 2003—The John Steinbeck Award in literature (Master of the Senate). 2003—The Carl Sandberg Award in Literature (Master of the Senate). 2003—The Los Angeles Times Book award in Non-Fiction (Master of the Senate). 2002— The National Book Award (Master of the Senate). 2002 - The Power Broker was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century. 1990—The National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year (Means of Ascent). 1991—Washington Monthly American Political Book Award (Means of Ascent). 1986—The Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 1983 – The Mencken Award for the best book of 1982 (The Path to Power). 1983 – The Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Arts and Letters (The Path to Power). 1983 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. 1983 – The Blue Pencil Award from the Columbia Daily Spectator. 1982—The National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year (The Path to Power). 1975—The Pulitzer Prize for Biography (The Power Broker). 1975 – AIA Special Citation. 1975—The Francis Parkman Prize awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best “exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist” -- (The Power Broker). 1975 – Washington Monthly American Political Book Award (The Power Broker). 1965-1966- Nieman W. Lucius Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University Nieman Foundation. 1965 – The Deadline Club for outstanding newspaper reporting. 1964 – The Deadline Club for outstanding newspaper reporting. 1964 The Society of Silurians Award for outstanding achievement in the field of Public Service History for a series entitled “Misery Acres,” exposing fraudulent real estate sales by mail. 1957 – Graduated from Princeton University Cum Laude.

Family

Caro has described his wife, Ina Caro, as "the whole team" on all four of his books. She sold the Caros' house to fund work on The Power Broker, and is the only person other than himself who conducted research for her husband's books. She is the author of her own book, The Road from the Past: Travelling through History in France. When it was published in 1994, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., called it "the essential travelling companion ... for all who love France and its history." Commented Newsweek reviewer Peter Prescott: "I'd rather go to France with Ina Caro than with Henry Adams or Henry James. The unique premise of her intelligent and discerning book is so startling that it’s a wonder no one has thought of it before." Ina frequently writes about their travels through France in her Paris to the Past blog, and in June 2011, W. W. Norton published her second book, "Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train."

Pop culture references

In the television series The Simpsons, the episode "Treehouse of Horror XVI" features the character Lisa seen reading Master of the Senate in the vignette "Bart A.I."

In the 2004 film The Stepford Wives, Nicole Kidman's character attends a book club meeting with the Stepford Wives and attempts to discuss the third volume of Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson but the group chooses to instead review a book of Christmas crafts.

Bibliography

• Caro, Robert A., The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. 1974. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. (ISBN 0394480767). ix + 1246 pp. + xxxiv pp.: illus.
• Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power. 1982. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. (ISBN 0394499735). xxiii + 882 p. + 48 p. of plates: illus.
• Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. 1990. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. (ISBN 0394528352). xxxiv + 506 pp.
• Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. 2002. Alfred A. Knopf Inc, New York. (ISBN 0-394-52836-0). xxiv + 1167 pp.

References

• Zinsser, William Knowlton (ed.), Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0395486173

External links

• Official website
• Robert A. Caro's Jan. 5, 1998 New Yorker article on Robert Moses and the writing of The Power Broker
• Short essay about Caro by Morgan Meis.
• LOC.gov video. Robert Caro discusses his new book on President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Feb. 16, 2009 "Newsweek" article on Robert Caro and the publication of his final volume on President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Robert Caro: Understanding Power (Documentary on the life of Robert Caro)
  • Official website of Robert Caro
• Booknotes interview with Caro on Means of Ascent, April 29, 1990
• In Depth interview with Caro, April 7, 2002
• New York: A Documentary Film Caro appears as an on camera expert in the 1999 film New York: A Documentary Film directed by Ric Burns for PBS.