The Power Broker Caro spent the academic year of 1965–1966 as a
Nieman Fellow at
Harvard University. During a class on
urban planning and
land use, the experience of watching Moses returned to him. To do so, Caro began work on a biography of Moses,
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, also a study of Caro's favorite theme: the acquisition and use of power. He expected it would take nine months to complete, but instead it took him until 1974. 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. Upon its publication, Moses responded to the biography in a 23-page statement repudiating the book. , 2019
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Following
The Power Broker, Caro turned his attention to President
Lyndon B. Johnson. Caro's editor
Robert Gottlieb initially suggested the Johnson project to Caro in preference to the planned follow-up to the Moses volume, a biography of
Fiorello La Guardia. The ex-president had recently died and Caro had already decided, before meeting with Gottlieb on the subject, to undertake his biography; he "wanted to write about power". 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, was originally intended as a trilogy, but is projected to encompass five volumes: •
The Path to Power (1982) covers Johnson's life up to his failed 1941 campaign for the
United States Senate. •
Means of Ascent (1990) commences in the aftermath of that defeat and continues through his election to that office in 1948. •
Master of the Senate (2002) chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent and rule as
Senate Majority Leader. •
The Passage of Power (2012) details the
1960 election, LBJ's life as vice president, the
JFK assassination and his first days as president. • One as-of-yet unpublished final volume. In November 2011, Caro announced that the full project had expanded to five volumes with the fifth requiring another two to three years to write. It will cover Johnson and Vietnam, the Great Society and civil rights era, his decision not to run in 1968, and eventual retirement. In a 2017 interview, Caro expressed his intent to embark shortly on a research trip to Vietnam. In an interview with
The New York Review of Books in January 2018, Caro indicated he did not know when the book would be finished, mentioning anywhere from two to ten years. As of March 2025, Caro had completed 980 pages of the fifth volume. Caro's books portray Johnson as a complex and contradictory character: at the same time a scheming opportunist and visionary progressive. Caro argues, 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, although this is set in the practices of the time and in the context of Johnson's previous defeat in his 1941 race for the Senate, the victim of exactly similar chicanery. Caro 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. Caro argued that Johnson was awarded the
Silver Star in
World War II for political as well as military 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, and his consummate skill in getting this enacted in spite of intense opposition from
Southern Democrats. Among sources close to the late president, Johnson's widow
Lady Bird Johnson "spoke to [Caro] several times and then abruptly stopped without giving a reason, and
Bill Moyers, Johnson's press secretary, never consented to be interviewed, but most of Johnson's closest friends, including
John Connally and
George Christian, Johnson's last press secretary, who spoke to Caro practically on his deathbed, have gone on the record".
Caro's editors and publishers Caro's books have been published by
Alfred A. Knopf, first under editor-in-chief
Robert Gottlieb and then by
Sonny Mehta after Gottlieb's temporary departure to
The New Yorker in 1987. Gottlieb remained Caro's primary editor throughout. 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 of writing a "full-scale memoir" after completing
The Years of Lyndon Johnson. His 2019 book
Working has been described as a "semi-memoir" focused on "Caro's selection of observations...on the arts of researching, interviewing and writing". When asked about other works he would have pursued, Caro replied a biography on
Al Smith, commenting "the more you learn about Al Smith, the more you realize he is probably the most forgotten consequential figure in American history."
Writing process After conducting his years-long research, Caro attempts to "see the whole book right down to the last line," by putting up an outline on a 22-foot corkboard before writing the first manuscript, as a way to prevent
writer's block. Subsequently, Caro types his books on
Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriters, which
The New Republic called "a model practically synonymous with him". One of these, the one used when writing
The Power Broker, was placed on display at the
New York Historical's
"Turn Every Page": Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive exhibition. Since production of these was discontinued, Caro uses his reserve to supply parts when these become defective. ==Awards and honors==