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Robert Allan Caro was born October 30, 1935 in New York. He went to Princeton University, where he majored in English and became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian. Caro began his professional career as a reporter with the New Brunswick Daily Home News. He took a brief leave to work for the toon meer Middlesex County Democratic Party as a publicist. He went on to six years as an investigative reporter with the Long Island newspaper Newsday. Robert Caro then went on to write about influential people in New York. His work The Power Broker was a biography on New York urban planner Robert Moses, that highlighted the fight for a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay. He then went on to write about Lyndon Johnson's life in a 5 volume set. Caro's books portray Johnson as a complex character who he also saw as a visionary progressive. He enjoyed writing about politicians and their use of power. For his biographies, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, the National Book Award, the Francis Parkman Prize which is awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that "best exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist" two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the H.L. Mencken Award, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters. In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, the highest award in the humanities given in this country and in 2012 his title Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson made the New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Fotografie: Joyce Ravid

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The Paris Review reprint towards the back of the book is worth the price of admission. I read this because I was curious about how Robert A. Caro could write such well-loved and prize-winning biographies. This small book is a series of articles and vignettes about his lifetime work, The Power Broker, and his multi-volume set of books on Lyndon B. Johnson.

I also came to this work because I watched a documentary about his working relationship with Robert Gottlieb, the 20th/21st-century's greatest editor. Turn Every Page is a delight to watch. this book covers some of the same ground and stories but then goes into depth with specifics about how he researches and writes.

In the Paris Review interview, you will find his six steps, which I've summarized here:

How do you do research?
1. Read all the books on a subject.
2. Then the big newspapers and all the magazines.
3. Newspapers from the little towns.
4. The documents
5. Interviews formal and informal chats
6. Are you making the reader see the Scene

But if you are a writer or heavy reader, you will not want to miss the book. These six steps do not do justice to his writing and the included stories.

Thank you to my friend Robing for recommending the book. Now to read the heavy tome that is The Power Broker.
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auldhouse | 21 andere besprekingen | Mar 13, 2024 |
I really enjoyed this book. I appreciate that Robert Caro was willing to share his interviewing and research methods with us. He is clearly very excited about his subject matters and his writing and that all comes through to his readers. His is the kind of writing that makes history come alive because he pays such attention to getting at the truth and also the surrounding details of place which lifts the book beyonds a list of facts.
 
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ellink | 21 andere besprekingen | Jan 22, 2024 |
When this book was published, Robert Caro made the rounds on the more cerebral talk shows in electronic media, and I heard him talk about this book on Charlie Rose among other places. I don't remember if he said that he would write a fourth volume on Lyndon Johnson's presidency. In spite of some weariness (I've read all three volumes of this biography in the past year) with the subject, I hope Mr. Caro does apply his magisterial research and writing skills to those years of Lyndon Johnson's career.
I rate this book four stars--for it certainly, objectively rates five--for highly subjective reasons: this is more a book about the United States Senate and the byzantine manner with which in functions (or doesn't), and the gravamen of this book is that body's manifold attempts in the late 1950s to pass civil rights legislation. Because Lyndon Johnson is widely regarded as a leader on civil rights, Mr. Caro writes and analyzes how Senator Lyndon Johnson bent the Senate to his considerable will and, quietly but effectively, scuttled one civil rights bill after another.
Much of the analysis of the functions of the Senate works to show just how Lyndon Johnson was able to do this; I understand the purpose of all this--to maintain the high standard of scholarly disinterest, and therefore integrity, that Robert Caro sets for himself. Nonetheless, I found much of the narrative on the Senate itself exhausting and repetitious, and therefore give this book a highly subjective four star rating.
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Mark_Feltskog | 37 andere besprekingen | Dec 23, 2023 |
Simply a stunning achievement, and by far the best book of its kind I have ever read; perhaps the best book of any kind I have ever read.
 
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Mark_Feltskog | 46 andere besprekingen | Dec 23, 2023 |

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