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.
“A wonderful, a glorious tale. . . . It will be hard to equal this
amazing book. It reads like a Trollope novel, but not even Trollope
explored the ambitions and the gullibilities of men as deliciously
as Robert Caro does. Even though I knew what the outcome of a
particular episode would be, I followed Caro’s account of it with
excitement. I went back over chapters to make sure I had not missed
a word . . . Caro’s description of how [Johnson passed the civil
rights legislation] is masterly; I was there and followed the
course of the legislation closely, but I did not know the half of
it.”
—Anthony Lewis, The New York Times Book Review
“A masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great
political biographies of the modern age.”
—Daniel Finkelstein, The Times (London)
“Mesmerizing. . . . [It] brings LBJ blazing into the Senate. . . .
A tale rife with drama and hypnotic in the telling. The historian’s
equivalent of a Mahler symphony.”
—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
“Caro’s immersion in the man and period yields a fascinating,
entertaining abundance . . . Master of the Senate splendidly
reassembles the U.S. Senate of those years.”
—Time
“Brilliant . . . Caro achieves a special tension, too rare in
history books but essential in epic poetry: the drama of a hero who
is wrestling with his enemies, his limitations and his fate to
achieve something truly lasting . . . In his hands, the obscure
fight over legislation becomes nothing less than a battle for the
soul of America . . . It’s a terribly important work, unblinkingly
delineating the inner workings of our democracy.”
—Chicago Tribune
“An epic tale of winning and wielding power.”
—Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Caro must be America's greatest living Presidential biographer . .
. He entrances us with both his words and his research . . . No
other contemporary biographer offers such a complex picture of the
forces driving an American politician, or populates his work with
such vividly drawn secondary characters. Extraordinary.”
—Richard S. Dunham, BusinessWeek
“The most complete portrait of the Senate ever drawn.”
—Michael Wolff, New York
“A terrific study of power politics.”
—Steve Neal, Chicago Sun-Times
“In this fascinating book, Robert Caro does more than carry forward
his epic life of Lyndon Johnson. With compelling narrative power
and with remarkable subtlety and sensitivity, he illuminates the
Senate of the United States and its byzantine power struggles. In
this historical tour-de-force, Robert Caro shows himself the true
'master of the Senate.’”
—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr
“Master of the Senate and its two preceding volumes are the highest
expression of biography as art. After The Path to Power and Means
of Ascent, there shouldn’t be much debate about Caro's grand
achievement, but let’s be clear about this nonetheless: In terms of
political biography, not only does it not get better than this, it
can’t.”
—Patrick Beach, Austin American-Statesman
“These [legislative battles] are great stories, the stuff of the
legends of democracy—rich in character, plot, suspense, nuttiness,
human frailty, maddening stupidity. These should be the American
sagas; these should be our epics. Bob Caro has given us a beauty,
and I think we owe him great thanks.”
—Molly Ivins, New York Observer
“Indefatigably researched and brilliantly written . . . Powerful .
. . One of Caro’s most valuable contributions is his excavation of
the lost art of legislating . . . Rich and rewarding.”
—Ronald Brownstein, Times Literary Supplement
“Epic . . . It is impossible to imagine that a political science
class on the U.S. Congress can be taught today that does not
reference this book. It is a florid and graphic account of how
Congress works, an authoritative work on the history of the Senate
and a virtual cookbook of recipes for legislative success for the
nascent politician.”
—Robert F. Julian, New York Law Journal
“A panoramic study of how power plays out in the legislative arena.
Combining the best techniques of investigative reporting with
majestic storytelling ability, Caro has created a vivid, revelatory
institutional history as well as a rich hologram of Johnson's
character . . . He seems to have perfectly captured and understood
Johnson’s capacity for greatness.”
—Jill Abramson, New York Times
“Master of the Senate forces us not only to rewrite our national
political history but to rethink it as well . . . Caro’s been
burrowing beneath the shadows of the substance of our politics for
more than twenty-eight years, and what he finds is both fascinating
and surprising . . . Compulsively readable.”
—Eric Alterman, The Nation
“A spectacular piece of historical biography, delicious reading for
both political junkies and serious students of the political
process . . . Fascinating.”
—Robert D. Novak, The Weekly Standard
“Vintage Caro—a portrait so deft, vivid, and compelling that you
practically feel LBJ gripping your arm and bending you to his
will.”
—Jean Strouse
“Caro is a master of biography . . . With his Tolstoyian touch for
storytelling and drama, Caro gives us a fascinating ride through
the corridors of Senate sovereignty . . . Of all the many Johnson
biographies, none approaches Caro’s work in painstaking
thoroughness, meticulous detail and the capture of character . . .
A dazzling tour de force that certifies Caro as the country's
preeminent specialist in examining political power and its
uses.”
—Paul Duke, Baltimore Sun
“Masterful . . . A work of genius.”
—Steve Weinberg, New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Caro writes history with [a] novelist’s sensitivity . . . No
historian offers a more vivid sense not only of what happened, but
what it looked like and felt like.”
—Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
“The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious,
the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of
characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book
about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art
of biography.”
—Ron Chernow
“Destined to rank among the great political profiles of our time.
Master of the Senate succeeds only in part because Johnson is such
a fascinating figure. The other half of the equation is Caro.”
—Steve Kraske, Kansas City Star
“It is, quite simply, the finest biography I have ever read. It is
more than that: it is one of the finest works of literature I have
encountered.”
—Stephen Pollard, The New Statesman
“Caro is a gifted and passionate writer, and his all-encompassing
approach to understanding LBJ provides readers with a panoramic
history of twentieth-century American politics as well as a
compelling discourse on the nature and uses of political power . .
. One of the best analyses of the legislative process ever
written.”
—Philip A. Klinkner, The Nation
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