Working

 

I revere Robert Caro, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography titled The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and the four-volume (soon to be five-volume) biography of Lyndon Johnson, which also won a Pulitzer, as well as many other prizes.  The books read like novels and the depth of his research is astonishing and widely celebrated - "Due to Caro's reputation for exhaustive research and detail, he is sometimes invoked by reviewers of other writers who are called "Caro-esque" for their own extensive research" (Wikipedia).  Master of the Senate, which covers 11 years of Johnson's life, took Caro 12 years to write.  

Caro is now 89.  I used to say that I hoped he would finish the final volume of his Johnson biography before he died, but I now say that I hope he will finish it before I die.

Caro ends the Introduction to Working this way: 

AND, FINALLY, one more question to answer: why am I publishing this book now, why don't I just include this material in the longer, full-length memoir I'm hoping to write? Why am I publishing these random recollections toward a memoir while I'm still working on the last volume of the Johnson biography, when I haven't finished it, while I'm still - at the age of 83 - several years from finishing it?

The answer is, I'm afraid, quite obvious, and if I forget it for a few days, I am frequently reminded of it by journalists who, in the course of writing about me and my hopes of finishing, often express their doubts about that happening in a sarcastic phrase: "Do the math." Well, I can do that math. I am quite aware that I may never get to write the memoir, although I have so many thoughts about writing, so many anecdotes about research, that I would like to preserve for anyone interested enough to read them. I decided that, just in case, I'd put some of them on paper now.

And the book is a profound pleasure.  It recaps some of the main conclusions of the Moses and LBJ books, providing fascinating context and detail about how the research was done. And, as he reluctantly admits, to give the full story, he must sometimes provide insights into his own personality and motivations.  For me, in addition to his incomparable reputation as researcher and writer, this book shows him to be a modest, honorable and admirable person.