Robert Caro at the LBJ Library

This program featured Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Robert Caro during the course of two days. Mr. Caro took Book TV on a tour of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and explained how he does his research. He has used the Johnson papers in his multi-volume biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, published by Random House. He was working on his fourth and final volume in the series, concentrating for the first time on the vice-presidential and presidential years. The tour is interspersed with segments of a talk he gave at the library on May 13, 2003. Although he has researched the life of the former president using the library’s papers for 26 years, Mr. Caro had never spoken at the library before. During his talk he answered questions from members of the audience. Segments from the talk were interspersed with the tour.

In 1975, Mr. Caro began researching a planned 3 volume biography of Lyndon Johnson entitled The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The first volume, The Path to Power was published in 1982. The second volume, Means of Ascent was published in 1990. The project turned into a 4 volume biography before the 2002 release of Master of the Senate for which he has received his second Pulitzer Prize. He also won a Pulitzer for his 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. close