From the two-time
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of
Lyndon Johnson: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply
revealing recollections about his experiences researching and writing
his acclaimed books
For the first time
in book form, Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and
work in these evocatively written, personal pieces. He describes what
it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses; what it felt like
to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded;
the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt
confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in
Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime
residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses'
Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty
and influence of one of LBJ's mistresses. He gratefully remembers
how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers'
community at the New York Public Library, and details the ways he
goes about planning and composing his books.
Caro recalls
the moments at which he came to understand that he wanted to write
not just about the men who wielded power but about the people and the
politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the
importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it
with a sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to
life on the page. Taken together, these reminiscences--some
previously published, some written expressly for this book--bring
into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation, and the integrity
with which this brilliant historian has always approached his work.