Robert Caro

Robert Caro (born October 30, 1935, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American historian and author whose extensive biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Moses went beyond studies of the men who were their subjects to investigate the practice of political power in the United States.

Caro was raised in Manhattan and developed his interests in history and journalism at a young age. He self-published a mimeographed newspaper at his grade school and read extensively, including Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Later, as a student at Princeton University, Caro was the managing editor of the campus newspaper The Daily Princetonian and wrote short stories for the school’s humour magazine The Princeton Tiger. After graduating with a B.A. in English in 1957, Caro worked as a reporter for the New Brunswick Daily Home News, then as an investigative reporter for Newsday.

While at Newsday he became fascinated by the vast political power Moses wielded as a public official in shaping New York City, particularly after an enormously unpopular bridge project was built because he willed it so. A desire to explore Moses’s power in further depth later led Caro to spend seven years interviewing hundreds of people connected with Moses and his public works projects and examining public records and previously secret files. The result was a 1,200-page biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974). Caro was awarded his first Pulitzer Prize for the book, which became known as a classic in the field of urban planning.

Soon after The Power Broker’s publication, Caro began research on The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982), which he conceived of as the first in a series of books covering the former president’s life. In the process of researching the first volume, which would document Johnson’s life up until the United States entered World War II, Caro moved with his wife, Ina, to Texas Hill Country, where Johnson had been born and raised. Caro immersed himself in the local culture for three years and became accepted as an insider, which made him privy to rarely told truths about Johnson’s childhood and early adulthood. Assisted by Ina, who was a medieval historian and writer, Caro conducted extensive research that included combing through millions of documents at Johnson’s presidential library. Caro’s portrayal of Johnson’s ruthless quest for power caused some critics to decry his portrayal of the president as unfairly critical, but the general reception of the meticulously documented book was overwhelmingly positive.

Caro continued his research on Johnson, publishing the second book of the series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, in 1990. Covering Johnson’s rise to power between World War II and his election to the U.S. Senate in 1948, the book brought to light two particularly controversial episodes in Johnson’s career: his routine exaggerations about the conditions under which he was awarded a Silver Star for his military service and the questionable circumstances surrounding his 1948 Senate win. In 2003 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate was published. In addition to covering Johnson’s time in the Senate from 1949 to 1960, the work examined the politics of the Senate and included a 100-page history of the political body. Caro’s fourth book on Johnson appeared in 2012. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power examined Johnson’s transition from powerful Senate leader to what Caro described as a relatively powerless position as vice president and, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy—which Caro vividly described through Johnson’s eyes—his ascent to the presidency.

After the publication of The Passage of Power, Caro estimated that he would complete his series with one final volume. During this time, he published Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing (2019), in which he recounted the process of creating his books.

Caro, often credited with reinventing the art of political biography, won numerous awards, including a National Book Critics Circle Award (1982) for The Path to Power, a National Book Critics Circle Award (1990) for Means of Ascent, a National Book Award (2002) and Pulitzer Prize (2003) for Master of the Senate, the National Humanities Medal (2009), and a National Book Critics Circle Award (2012) for The Passage of Power. The documentary Turn Every Page—The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (2022) chronicles the professional relationship between the author and his longtime editor.

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