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.
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
"Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." —David
Halberstam, Pulitzer–Prize winning journalist and author of The
Best and the Brightest
"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." —President Barack
Obama
"The most absorbing, detailed, instructive, provocative book ever
published about the making and raping of modern New York City and
environs and the man who did it, about the hidden plumbing of New
York City and State politics over the last half-century, about the
force of personality and the nature of political power in a
democracy. A monumental work, a political biography and political
history of the first magnitude." —Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York
"One of the most exciting, un-put-downable books I have ever read.
This is definitive biography, urban history, and investigative
journalism. This is a study of the corruption which power exerts on
those who wield it to set beside Tacitus and his emperors,
Shakespeare and his kings." —Daniel Berger, Baltimore Evening
Sun
"Simply one of the best nonfiction books in English of the past 40
years . . . There has probably never been a better dissection of
political power . . . From the first page . . . you know that you
are in the hands of a master . . . Riveting . . . Superb . . . Not
just a stunning portrait of perhaps the most influential builder in
world history . . . but an object lesson in the dangers of power.
Every politician should read it." —Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday
Times
"A study of municipal power that will change the way any reader of
the book hereafter peruses his newspaper." —Philip Herrera,
Time
"A triumph, brilliant and totally fascinating. A majestic, even
Shakespearean, drama about the interplay of power and personality."
—Justin Kaplan
"In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American
cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this
extraordinary effort." —Richard C. Wade, The New York Times Book
Review
"The feverish hype that dominates the merchandising of arts and
letters in America has so debased the language that, when a truly
exceptional achievement comes along, there are no words left to
praise it. Important, awesome, compelling--these no longer summon
the full flourish of trumpets this book deserves. It is
extraordinary on many levels and certain to endure." —William
Greider, The Washington Post Book World
"A modern Machiavelli's Prince." —The Guardian
"One of the great biographies of all time . . . [by] one of the
great reporters of our time . . . and probably the greatest
biographer. He is also an extraordinary writer. After reading page
136 of his book The Power Broker, I gasped and read it again, then
again. This, I thought, is how it should be done . . . One of the
greatest nonfiction works ever written . . . Every MP, wonk and
would-be wonk in Westminster has read [Robert Caro's The Years of
Lyndon Johnson], because they think it is the greatest insight into
power ever written. They're nearly right: it's the second greatest
after The Power Broker." —Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times
"Apart from the book's being so good as biography, as city history,
as sheer good reading, The Power Broker is an immense public
service." —Jane Jacobs
"Required reading for all those who hope to make their way in urban
politics; for the reformer, the planner, the politician and even
the ward heeler." —Jules L. Wagman, Cleveland Press
"An extraordinary study of the workings of power, individually,
institutionally, politically, and economically in our republic."
—Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal
"Caro has written one of the finest, best-researched and most
analytically informative descriptions of our political and
governmental processes to appear in a generation." —Nicholas Von
Hoffman, The Washington Post
"This is irresistibly readable, an outright masterpiece and
unparalleled insight into how power works and perhaps the greatest
portrait ever of a world city." —David Sexton, The Evening
Standard
"Caro's achievement is staggering. The most unlikely
subjects--banking, ward politics, construction, traffic management,
state financing, insurance companies, labor unions, bridge
building--become alive and contemporary. It is cheap at the price
and too short by half. A milestone in literary and publishing
history." —Donald R. Morris, The Houston Post
"A masterpiece of American reporting. It's more than the story of a
tragic figure or the exploration of the unknown politics of our
time. It's an elegantly written and enthralling work of art."
—Theodore H. White
"A stupendous achievement . . . Caro's style is gripping, indeed
hypnotic, and he squeezes every ounce of drama from his remarkable
story . . . Can a democracy combine visionary leadership with
effective checks and balances to contain the misuse of power? No
book illustrates this fundamental dilemma of democracy better than
The Power Broker . . . Indeed, no student of government can regard
his education as complete until he has read it." —Vernon Bogdanor,
The Independent
"Irresistible reading. It is like one of the great Russian novels,
overflowing with characters and incidents that all fit into a vast
mosaic of plot and counterplot. Only this is no novel. This is a
college education in power corruption." —George McCue, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
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