For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, ROBERT A.
CARO has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, has three
times won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has also won
virtually every other major literary honor, including the National
Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, 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.” In 2010 President
Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal, stating at
the time: “I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker
back when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized, and
I’m sure it helped to shape how I think about politics.” In 2016 he
received the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. The
London Sunday Times has said that Caro is “The greatest political
biographer of our times.”
Caro’s first book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of
New York, everywhere acclaimed as a modern classic, was chosen by
the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books
of the twentieth century. It is, according to David
Halberstam, “Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.”
And The New York Times Book Review said: “In the future, the
scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth
century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary
effort.”
The first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power,
was cited by The Washington Post as “proof that we live in a great
age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caro’s
evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson’s
unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually
work, are—let it be said flat out—at the summit of American
historical writing.” Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia
University called the second volume, Means of Ascent, “brilliant.
No review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling,
which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.” The
London Times hailed volume three, Master of the Senate, as “a
masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great
political biographies of the modern age.” The Passage of Power,
volume four, has been called “Shakespearean . . . A breathtakingly
dramatic story [told] with consummate artistry and ardor” (The New
York Times) and “as absorbing as a political thriller . . . By
writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen,
Caro has forever changed the way we think about, and read, American
history” (NPR). On the cover of The New York Times Book Review,
President Bill Clinton praised it as “Brilliant . . . Important . .
. Remarkable. With this fascinating and meticulous account Robert
Caro has once again done America a great service.”
“Caro has a unique place among American political biographers,” The
Boston Globe said . . . “He has become, in many ways, the standard
by which his fellows are measured.” And Nicholas von Hoffman wrote:
“Caro has changed the art of political biography.”
Born and raised in New York City, Caro graduated from Princeton
University, was later a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and
worked for six years as an investigative reporter for Newsday. He
lives in New York City with his wife, Ina, the historian and
writer.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES
TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN
HISTORY BOOK PRIZE
“Brilliant . . . Important . . . Remarkable . . . In sparking
detail, Caro shows Johnson’s genius for getting to people—friends,
foes, and everyone in between—and how he used it to achieve his
goals . . . With this fascinating and meticulous account Robert
Caro has once again done America a great service.”
—President Bill Clinton, The New York Times Book Review (front
cover)
“By writing the best presidential biography the country has
ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think, and read,
American history . . . Although the amount of research Caro has
done for these books is staggering, it’s his immense talent as a
writer that has made his biography of Johnson one of America’s most
amazing literary achievements . . . Caro’s chronicle is as
absorbing as a political thriller . . . There’s not a wasted
word, not a needless anecdote . . . Most impressively, Caro comes
closer than any other historian could to explaining the famously
complex LBJ . . . Caro’s portrayal of the president is as
scrupulously fair as it is passionate and deeply felt . . . The
series is a masterpiece, unlike any other work of American
history published in the past. It’s true that there will never be
another Lyndon B. Johnson, but there will never be another Robert
A. Caro, either.” —Michael Schaub, NPR
“A breathtakingly dramatic story about a pivotal moment in
United States history [told] with consummate artistry and
ardor . . . It showcases Mr. Caro’s masterly gifts as a
writer: his propulsive sense of narrative, his talent for enabling
readers to see and feel history in the making and his ability to
situate his subjects’ actions within the context of their
times . . . Caro manages to lend even much-chronicled events a
punch of tactile immediacy . . . Johnson emerges as both a
larger-than-life, Shakespearean personage—with epic ambition and
epic flaws—and a more human-scale puzzle . . . Mr. Caro uses
his storytelling gifts to turn seemingly arcane legislative
maneuvers into action-movie suspense, and he gives us
unparalleled understanding of how Johnson used a crisis and his
own political acumen to implement his agenda with stunning
speed. Taken together the installments of Mr. Caro’s
monumental life of Johnson form a revealing prism by which to
view the better part of a century in American life and
politics.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“A great work of history . . . A great biography . . . Caro has
summoned Lyndon Johnson to vivid, intimate life.” —Newsweek
“Making ordinary politics and policymaking riveting and revealing
is what makes Caro a genius. Combined with his penetrating
insight and fanatical research, Caro’s Churchill-like prose
elevates the life of a fairly influential president to stuff worthy
of Shakespeare . . . Reading Caro’s books can feel like
encountering the life of an American president for the first time .
. . Caro’s judgment is solid, his prose inspiring, and his research
breathtaking . . . Robert Caro stands alone as the unquestioned
master of the contemporary American political biography.”
—Jordan Michael Smith, The Boston Globe
“A meditation on power as profound as Machiavelli’s.” —Lara
Marlowe, Irish Times
“One of the most compelling political narratives of the past
half-century . . . A vivid picture of how political power worked in
the US during the middle of the 20th century at local, state and
national level . . . This extraordinary work will remain essential
reading for decades to come.” —Richard Lambert, Financial Times
“Unrivaled . . . Caro does not merely recount. He beckons. Single
sentences turn into winding, brimming paragraphs, clauses upon
clauses tugging at the reader, layering the scenery with character
intrigue and the plot with historical import. The result is
irresistible . . . Passage covers with all the artistry and
intrigue of a great novel events that are seared in the nation’s
memory. In an era defined by fragmented media markets,
instantaneous communication, gadflies and chattering suits, Caro
stands not merely apart, but alone.”
—William Howell, San Francisco Chronicle
“The greatest political biography ever written . . . The most
sweeping historical tour de force since Gibbons’s Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire . . . Caro has imprinted himself into history.
His work is now the benchmark of political biography.” —Paul
Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald
“Riveting . . . Masterful . . . An insightful account of what it
means and what it takes to occupy the Oval Office.” —Steve Paul,
The Kansas City Star
“Robert Caro is the essential chronicler of these times: And these
times should never be forgotten.” —Joel Connelly, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
“Caro’s masterpiece of biography . . . His strength as a biographer
is his ability to probe Johnson’s mind and motivations . . .
Riveting . . . A roller-coaster tale.”
—The Economist
“The latest in what is almost without question the greatest
political biography in modern times . . . Nobody goes deeper, works
harder or produces more penetrating insights than [Caro].” —Patrick
Beach, Austin American-Statesman
“The politicians’ political book of choice . . . An encyclopedia of
dirty tricks that would make Machiavelli seem naïve.” —Michael
Burleigh, London Literary Review
“Majestic . . . The reporting is copious, the writing elegant and
energetic, the sentences frequently rushing forward themselves like
mighty rivers. Four books, and nearly four decades, into this vast
project, Caro’s commitment to excellence has not wavered or even
slackened; the reader can feel the sheer force of his effort on
every page.” —Ronald Brownstein, Democracy
“By dramatizing the capacities and limitations of the most talented
politician of the postwar era, Caro aims to make readers shrewder
citizens . . . As a student of power, Caro is a Machiavelli for
democrats, who instead of addressing the prince, addresses the
people.” —Thomas Meaney, The Nation
“Astonishing and unprecedented . . . a work of real literature,
among the best nonfiction works ever . . . His books . . . argue
that things happen because certain people with power want them to
happen . . . It is not inconceivable to think that, without the
presence of LBJ and the influence on him of his character and his
experiences, none [of the civil rights bills] would have won
Congressional approval . . . More than operatic, Caro’s Johnson
books deserve another adjective, one that matches his genius, his
sensitivity and his ambition: Shakespearean.”
—Patrick T. Reardon
“The best biography I’ve ever read . . . Incredibly well-written,
with the tension and drama of a compulsive thriller, and the style
of an elegant novel. Caro’s books aren’t just about politics, or
just about Lyndon Johnson. His books are about America, its
culture, its history, and its society. Above all, Caro’s books are
about power, how to achieve it and make it multiply; how to use
power and how to lose it.” —Michael Crick, UK Channel 4 News
“My book of the year, by a landslide majority, was The Passage of
Power. The adjective ‘Shakespearean’ is overused and mostly
undeserved but not in this case. LBJ emerges from this biography as
a fully rounded tragic hero: cowardly and brave, petty and
magnificent, vindictive and noble, a man of vaunting ambition and
profound insecurities. Caro marries profound psychological insight
with a brilliant eye for the drama of the times.” —Robert Harris,
The Guardian (London)
“Caro is a genius at delineating character, and not just that of
the deliciously complicated LBJ. He investigates, among other
larger-than-life figures, the Kennedy brothers, the powerful and
unbending Harry Byrd of Virginia, and the clownlike but devoted
Bobby Baker . . . Caro’s use of strong image and repetition, almost
hypnotic in combination, is breathtakingly effective. Caro is a
great historian, but if the purpose of art is to stimulate thought
and arouse emotion, he is also a great artist.” —Rosemary Michaud,
Charleston Post and Courier
“A portrait of executive leadership so evocative as to be
tactile.”
—Robert Draper, Wall Street Journal
“The only superstar biographer in the world . . . Caro’s [books]
transform biography into something new, a tour de force of
structured political opinion writing . . . A single theme emerges:
the insidious ways that clever politicians can gather and abuse
power—sometimes for good, sometimes for evil—in a modern democratic
society.” —Levi Asher, Literary Kicks
“One of the greatest biographies in the history of American
letters.”
—Bob Hoover, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“As riveting as a thriller . . . The next book will crown an
achievement in presidential biography unmatched among presidential
histories.”
—David Hendricks, Houston Chronicle
“Every page [of The Years of Lyndon Johnson] is compelling. For
many politicians it is the finest book on politics . . . The
ultimate political story.”
—Daniel Finkelstein, London Times
“Long live Robert Caro . . . Truly epic political history and
character study . . . Riveting . . . It elevates Caro’s tale to
Shakespearean drama, as the coldhearted, Machiavellian maneuvering
and hot-blooded rivalries of supremely ambitious men play out with
the fate of the free world at stake.”
—Dan DeLuca, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Brilliant . . . A masterclass in political management . . . Caro
not only re-creates one of the giants of modern politics, he tells
a giant tale about power and about life itself.” —Andrew
Adonis, New Statesman
“A masterly how-to manual, showing Johnson’s knowledge of
governing, his peerless congressional maneuvering and effective
deal-making. The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a compact
library: brilliant biography, gripping history, searing political
drama and an incomparable study of power. It’s also a great read .
. . And, after thousands of pages spent with Lyndon Johnson, one of
Caro’s singular achievements is that you want more.” —Peter
Gianotti, Newsday
“The Years of Lyndon Johnson, when completed, will rank as
America’s most ambitiously conceived, assiduously researched and
compulsively readable political biography . . . When Caro’s fifth
volume arrives, readers’ gratitude will be exceeded only by their
regret that there will not be a sixth.” —George F. Will
“This book shows the mastery of Johnson in politics, and also the
mastery of Caro in biography.” —David M. Shribman, Bloomberg
BusinessWeek
“Epic . . . A searing account of ambition derailed by personal
demons . . . a triumphant drama of ‘political genius in action’ . .
. Caro combines the skills of a historian, an investigative
reporter and a novelist in this searching study of the
transformative effect of power.” —Wendy Smith, Los Angeles
Times
“An addictive read, written in glorious prose that suggests the
world’s most diligent beat reporter channeling William Faulkner.
Passage is an essential document of a turning point in American
history. It’s also an incisive portrait of one great,
terrible, fascinating man suddenly given the chance to reinvent the
country in his image.” —Darren Franich, Entertainment Weekly
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