Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Robert Caro
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    -AUTHOR SITE: Robert A. Caro
    -BOOKNOTES: Means of Ascent by Robert Caro (C-SPAN, April 29, 1990)

LAMB: Can you remember the moment, the first moment that you said, "I want to do Lyndon Johnson?"

CARO: Well, I was a reporter on Newsday, and what I realized was not that I wanted to do biographies, Brian. I never conceived of writing books just as the lives of famous men. I really had no interest in that at all. What I wanted to do was explain how political power worked, because I was a reporter and I was covering politics, and I felt that I wasn't really explaining what I had gone into the newspaper business to explain, which was how political power worked, and a lot of it led back to this man, Robert Moses, a lot of what I didn't understand. Now, here was a guy who was never elected to anything, and I was coming to realize that he had more power than anyone who was governor or mayor.

LAMB: Who was he, by the way?

CARO: Well, Robert Moses was this Park Commissioner of New York and the Chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority. He built every bridge that has been built in New York since 1930. The Verazano, Throgsneck, Bronx, Whitestone, Henry Hudson. He built every mile of expressway and parkway that's been built in New York since the 1920s. All the parks he either built or rebuilt. He created so much of the landscape of New York. The book is called, "The Power Broker" and I really picked that title because he wasn't elected to anything, he got power from extra democratic means, such as the public authority.

He created public authorities in their present form, but I would be reporter, and no one knew this, including me, and I would be sitting there, and you typed City Park Commissioner, Robert Moses, and I'd wonder what did that have to do with the fact that he built the Long Island Expressway. Or you typed Triborough Bridge Authority, Robert Moses, and you'd say, well what exactly is an "authority", you know. We thought it was just something that built one bridge, collected tolls and went out of business. So I really wanted to examine how urban political power worked. I thought I could do it through the means of the life of Robert Moses, and all the time I was doing it, see I never thought I'd get to do another book, because we were just broke, the whole, I had a tiny advance. No one thought anyone would be interested in the book on Robert Moses. All I was trying to do was finish it.

    INTERVIEW: Interviews : Robert Caro, The Art of Biography No. 5 (James Santel, Paris Review)
    -INTERVIEW: Conversation: Award Winner Caro (Online NewsHour , June 3, 2003)
    -AWARD: Master of the Senate by Robert Caro (2002 National Book Award)
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    -ESSAY: Robert Caro’s Journalism Lessons: A trip to the New York Historical Society’s exhibition of the legendary biographer’s archive with CUNY journalism graduate students (Alex Shephard, December 7, 2021, New Republic))
    -ESSAY: Caro's Way (Scott Sherman, Columbia Journalism Review)
    -Robert A. Caro    -PROFILE: The Lifer: What could possibly have made biographer Robert Caro devote nearly three decades (and counting) to chronicling the life of LBJ? It's all about his -- and our -- addiction to power. (Michael Wolff, New York)
    -PROFILE: Mastering Johnson: Lyndon Johnson has consumed more than a quarter-century of Robert Caro's life. So what's a few more years? (Don McLeese, May/June 2002, Book)
    -PROFILE: Ghost Buster (Eric Alterman, 4/18/02, The Nation)
    -ARCHIVES: "robert a. caro" (Find Articles)
    -REVIEW: of MASTER OF THE SENATE: The Years of Lyndon Johnson By Robert A. Caro (Anthony Lewis, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Master of the Senate (Jill Abramson, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Master of the Senate (Ronald Steel, Atlantic Monthly)
    -REVIEW: of Master of the Senate (Alex Lee, Yale Review of Books)
    -VIDEO REVIEW: Turn Every Page (Jeannette Cooperman, Common Reader)
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