Background

Rober Allan Caro was born on October 30, 1935, in New York City. He is the son of Celia (née Mendelsohn), also born in New York, and Benjamin Caro, born in Warsaw, Poland. He grew up on Central Park West at 94th Street. His father, a businessman, spoke Yiddish as well as English, but he didn't speak either very often. He was 'very silent,' Caro said and became more so after Caro's mother died, after a long illness, when Robert was 12.

Education

Caro studied at the Horace Mann School, an exclusive private school in the Riverdale section of The Bronx. It was his mother's deathbed wish that he should go there. As a student there, Caro translated an edition of his school newspaper into Russian and mailed 10,000 copies to students in the USSR. He graduated in 1953 and enrolled in Princeton, where he majored in English.

While studying at Princeton University, Caro became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian, second to Johnny Apple, later a prominent editor at The New York Times. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957.

Career

Caro worked as a reporter for the New Brunswick Daily Home News, then as an investigative reporter for Newsday. While at Newsday he became fascinated by the vast political power Moses wielded as a public official in shaping New York City, particularly after an enormously unpopular bridge project was built because he willed it so. A desire to explore Moses’s power in further depth later led Caro to spend seven years interviewing hundreds of people connected with Moses and his public works projects and examining public records and previously secret files. The result was a 1,200-page biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974).

Soon after The Power Broker’s publication, Caro began research on The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982), which he conceived of as the first in a series of books covering the former president’s life. In the process of researching the first volume, which would document Johnson’s life up until the United States entered World War II, Caro moved with his wife, Ina, to the Texas Hill Country, where Johnson had been born and raised. Caro immersed himself in the local culture for three years and became accepted as an insider, which made him privy to rarely told truths about Johnson’s childhood and early adulthood. Assisted by Ina, who was a medieval historian and writer, Caro conducted extensive research that included combing through millions of documents at Johnson’s presidential library. Caro’s portrayal of Johnson’s ruthless quest for power caused some critics to decry his portrayal of the president as unfairly critical, but the general reception of the meticulously documented book was overwhelmingly positive.

Caro continued his research on Johnson, publishing the second book of the series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, in 1990. Covering Johnson’s rise to power between World War II and his election to the U.S. Senate in 1948, the book brought to light two particularly controversial episodes in Johnson’s career: his routine exaggerations about the conditions under which he was awarded a Silver Star for his military service and the questionable circumstances surrounding his 1948 Senate win. In 2003 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate was published. In addition to covering Johnson’s time in the Senate from 1949 to 1960, the work examined the politics of the Senate and included a 100-page history of the political body. Caro’s fourth book on Johnson appeared in 2012. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power examined Johnson’s transition from powerful Senate leader to what Caro described as a relatively powerless position as vice president and, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy - which Caro vividly described through Johnson’s eyes - his ascent to the presidency. After the publication of The Passage of Power, Caro estimated that he would complete his series with one final volume.

Achievements

• 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.”

Works

More photos

• book

  • Master Of The Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

    (Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon J...)

    2002
  • The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

    (Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsi...)

    1974
  • Working

    (For the first time in book form, Robert Caro gives us a g...)

    2019
  • Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

    (In Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johns...)

    1990
  • The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV eBook: Robert A. Caro: Kindle Store

    (Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyn...)

    2012
  • The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power 1982

Views

Quotations: "The power of history is, in the end, the greatest power."

"Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals."

"As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life."

"It's very important for America to know as much as possible about political power, about how it really works. Not what we're taught in textbooks, but the raw, naked realities of power. It's very important, because in a democracy, ultimately power comes from the ballot box, from us. So the more we know about political power, the more informed our votes will be, and therefore, theoretically, hopefully, the better our democracy will be. That's really the key thing to me."

Membership

• vice president

  Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association American Center

  1989 - 1992

• Century Club

• President

  Authors Guild

  1980 - 1982

• American Historians Society

Personality

Caro prefers to write in an office rather than his home, and always dresses in a suit and tie while working. Caro still handwrites all of his books before typing them up on his gray Smith Corona Electra 210. He purchased 17 of them when they were discontinued 30 years ago, and now he’s down to 11.

Quotes from others about the person

• “Caro has a unique place among American political biographers, he has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured.” - The Boston Globe.
  
  “Caro has changed the art of political biography.” - Nicholas von Hoffman.

Connections

Caro Married Ina Joan Sloshberg on June 9, 1957. Caro has described his wife, Ina Caro, as "the whole team" on all five of his books. She sold their house and took a job teaching school to fund work on The Power Broker and is the only person other than himself who conducted research for his books.

The Caros have a son, Chase Arthur, and three grandchildren. Robert Caro has a younger sibling, Michael, who is a retired real estate manager

Father:

Benjamin Caro

Mother:

Celia (Mendelow) Caro

Spouse:

Ina Joan Caro

Ina is the author of The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France (1996). Ina frequently writes about her travels through France in her blog, Paris to the Past. In June 2011, W. W. Norton published her second book, Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train.

child:

Chase Arthur Caro

Brother:

Michael Caro

Brother:

Michael Caro

References

• Robert A. Caro