'Literature of the deepest and highest sense'

 

“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

 

Born in New York City on this date in 1935, Caro is best known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson and is the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement.

Caro started in journalism while studying at Princeton University, was a reporter with the New Brunswick (N.J.) Daily Home News, and then served as an investigative reporter with Newsday where he came in contact with urban planner Moses.  Fascinated by Moses’ power, he wrote The Power Broker in 1974, named by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the 20^th Century.  The Power Broker is widely viewed as a seminal work because it combines painstaking historical research with a smoothly flowing narrative writing style.  

His series of books on The Years of Lyndon Johnson also has been widely praised and won nearly every possible literary award.

 Lauded for his exploration of how power both shapes lives and shapes decisions, he noted, “I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man.  I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.”