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LBJ Biographer Aims for Eternity

Tireless writer published average of one book every ten years

By Drew Nelles, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 8, 2009 6:56 PM CST

(Newser) – Lyndon Johnson's biographer takes his work seriously—so much so, he didn't cover LBJ's presidency for 30 years, Newsweek reports. Rising from the tabloid world in the 1960s, Robert Caro first wrote a painstaking biography of New York mogul Robert Moses. Next came a volume on LBJ's youth; Caro even slept outdoors in rural Texas to get a feel for it. History "can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term," Caro says.

Now tackling his fourth and final volume on LBJ, the Pulitzer Prize winner shows up daily at his Manhattan office in jacket and tie. Rules govern the placement of notes and outlines; he rewrites galleys and proofs at length. Whether his work ethic leads to success, Caro can't say, "because the test of whether something is literature is whether it endures for a long time."

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (1)]

In this March 16, 1964 file photo, Robert Moses, right, talks with Huntington Hartford. Robert Caro rose to fame with a massive biography of Moses in 1974. (AP Photo)

In this undated photo, President Lyndon Johnson sits with three of his beagles during a flight to his Texas ranch aboard Air Force One. (AP Photo/White House, FILE)

Lady Bird Johnson, left, and President Lyndon B. Johnson are shown. Robert Caro is currently working on the final volume of his massive Johnson biography. (AP Photo/ LBJ Library Photo/ Yoichi Okamoto)

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I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography—history in general—can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term. - Robert Caro

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LBJ Biographer Aims for Eternity