Robert Caro
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Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is a biographer most noted for his studies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
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[edit] Background
In 1953, Caro graduated from the Horace Mann School; in 1957 he received a degree in English from Princeton University, where he was managing editor of The Daily Princetonian. He then earned a master's degree from Columbia. He began his professional career as a reporter with the New Brunswick Daily Home News in New Jersey. He also spent six years as an investigative reporter with the Long Island, New York newspaper Newsday.
[edit] The Power Broker
After spending a year 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 numerous interviews, including those with Moses himself. His wife, Ina Caro, functioned as his research assistant. In fact, her master's thesis on the Triborough Bridge stemmed from this work. The Power Broker was a commercial and critical success, winning the Pulitzer Prize in biography and the Francis Parkman Prize, among others.
The Power Broker is widely viewed 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, which 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.
[edit] 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, will eventually comprise four volumes. The Path to Power (1982) covers Johnson's life through his failed 1941 campaign for the United States Senate. The second volume, Means of Ascent (1989), commences in the aftermath of that defeat and continues through his election to that office in 1948. 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. Caro is currently at work on the last volume, tentatively titled The Presidency.
Caro's books portray Johnson as alternating between 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 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. Despite these criticisms, Caro's portrayal of Johnson also notes his struggles on behalf of progressive causes such as the Voting Rights Act.
[edit] Pop culture references
In the television series' The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horrors XVI" the character Lisa is seen reading Master of the Senate in the vignette "Bart A.I."
[edit] External links
- Robert Caro's official website
- Short essay about Caro by Morgan Meis of 3 Quarks Daily
