Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and writer best known for writing books about important American leaders, Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson.
After working as a reporter for many years, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a book about Robert Moses, a New York city planner. This book was named one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of the 20th century by the Modern Library. Caro later wrote four of five planned books in The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), a biography about the former president. Caro is often called "the most influential biographer of the last century."
For his books, Caro has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, two National Book Awards (including one for Lifetime Achievement), the Francis Parkman Prize, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Mencken Award for Best Book, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the D. B. Hardeman Prize, and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, President Barack Obama gave Caro the National Humanities Medal.
Because of Caro’s reputation for doing very detailed research, some reviewers of other writers are sometimes described as "Caro-esque" due to their own thorough research methods.
Life and career
Robert Caro was born in New York City. His parents were Jewish. His mother, Celia Mendelow, was born in New York. His father, Benjamin Caro, was born in Warsaw, Poland. He grew up on Central Park West near 94th Street. His father, a businessman, knew Yiddish and English but rarely used them. He was "very silent," Caro said, and became even more quiet after his mother died from a long illness when Robert was 11. His mother wished for him to attend the Horace Mann School, a private school in the Riverdale section of The Bronx. At Horace Mann, Caro translated an edition of the school newspaper into Russian and sent 10,000 copies to students in the USSR. He graduated in 1953 and went to Princeton University, where he studied English. He became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian, second in rank to Johnny Apple, who later worked at The New York Times.
Caro’s writing, both in class and outside, was long even during his time at Horace Mann. A short story he wrote for The Princeton Tiger, the school’s humor magazine, filled nearly an entire issue. His senior thesis, a 235-page paper about existentialism in Hemingway titled “Heading Out: A Study of the Development of Ernest Hemingway’s Thought”, was so long that the university’s English department later set a maximum length for senior theses, called “the Caro rule.” He graduated with honors in 1957.
A 2012 article in The New York Times Magazine said Caro now believes Princeton was a mistake because he chose it for its social life. He thinks he should have gone to Harvard. Princeton in the 1950s was not very welcoming to Jewish students. Though Caro did not personally face discrimination, he saw others who did. He wrote for The Princetonian and The Princeton Tiger humor magazine.
Caro began his career as a reporter for the New Brunswick Daily Home News, now part of the Home News Tribune in New Jersey. He took a short break to work as a publicist for the Middlesex County Democratic Party. He left the party after seeing the party chair ignore racist police violence. While helping the chair visit polling places, Caro saw police roughly arrest Black poll watchers and put them in a police van. A police officer said the Black poll watchers had caused trouble, but the situation was “under control.” Caro later said he still remembers this moment. He was shocked not by the police’s actions, but by the political officials’ lack of resistance to what was happening.
After briefly studying English at Rutgers University, where he taught classes, Caro worked for six years as an investigative reporter for Newsday, a newspaper on Long Island. One of his early articles, “Anatomy of a $9 Burglary,” examined the lives of people affected by a $9 theft from a Long Island home. The New York Times praised this work for showing Caro’s dedication to uncovering the truth. He also wrote a long series about why a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay, supported by Robert Moses, would have been a bad idea. The bridge would have required large piers that could harm the area’s tidal flows. Caro believed his work influenced Governor Nelson Rockefeller to reconsider the plan, until the state Assembly passed a preliminary measure for the bridge.
Caro later said this was a turning point in his life. It made him think about Robert Moses for the first time. He realized that Moses, who had never been elected to any position, had enough power to influence the entire state. This experience changed his understanding of how power works in a democracy.
In 2004, Caro gave a speech to introduce Senator Ted Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention, highlighting the importance of courage in American leaders.
Work
Caro spent the academic year of 1965–1966 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. During a class on urban planning and land use, Caro remembered an experience from the past.
One day, the class was discussing highways and where they were built. They talked about mathematical formulas related to traffic and population density. Suddenly, Caro realized, "This is completely wrong. Highways are not built based on these formulas. They are built because Robert Moses wants them built there. If we do not understand and explain where Robert Moses gains his power, everything else we do will be dishonest."
To learn more about Moses, Caro began writing a biography titled The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. This work also explored Caro’s interest in how power is gained and used. He expected the book to take nine months, but it actually took until 1974 to complete. The book was based on extensive research, including 522 interviews. These included interviews with Michael Madigan (who worked for Moses for 35 years), Sidney Shapiro (Moses’s general manager for 40 years), and seven interviews with Moses himself. Caro also spoke with people who knew Moses’s mentor, New York Governor Al Smith. During the 1967–1968 academic year, Caro worked on the book as a Carnegie Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Caro’s wife, Ina, helped him as a research assistant. Her master’s thesis on the Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge was based on this work. At one point, she sold the family home and took a teaching job to help Caro finish the book financially.
The Power Broker is widely seen as an important work because it combined detailed historical research with a smooth storytelling style. One example of its success was Caro’s chapter on the Cross Bronx Expressway, where he reported on the controversy from all perspectives, including neighborhood residents. The book became both a literary and academic success. After its publication, Moses responded to the biography with a 23-page statement rejecting the book’s claims.
After The Power Broker, Caro focused on President Lyndon B. Johnson. His editor, Robert Gottlieb, suggested the Johnson project instead of a planned biography of Fiorello La Guardia. Caro had already decided to write about Johnson, saying he "wanted to write about power."
To understand Johnson’s life, Caro temporarily moved to rural Texas and Washington, D.C. He interviewed people who knew Johnson. The work, titled The Years of Lyndon Johnson, was originally planned as a trilogy but has grown to five volumes.
In November 2011, Caro announced the project would expand to five volumes, with the fifth requiring two to three more years to complete. The fifth volume will cover Johnson’s time in Vietnam, the Great Society, the civil rights era, his decision not to run in 1968, and his retirement. In 2017, Caro said he planned to visit Vietnam for research. In 2018, he mentioned the book’s completion might take anywhere from two to ten years.
As of March 2025, Caro had written 980 pages of the fifth volume.
Caro’s books show Johnson as a complex and contradictory figure: both a clever opportunist and a forward-thinking leader. For example, Caro wrote that Johnson’s 1948 Senate victory was achieved through fraud and ballot stuffing, which was common at the time. He also noted Johnson’s campaign contributions from companies like Brown and Root, which later became Halliburton, a major contractor in the Vietnam War.
Caro argued that Johnson received the Silver Star in World War II for both political and military reasons and later lied about how it was awarded. At the same time, Caro highlighted Johnson’s efforts to pass progressive laws like the Voting Rights Act, despite opposition from Southern Democrats.
Many people close to Johnson, such as Lady Bird Johnson and Bill Moyers, did not speak to Caro. However, some of Johnson’s closest friends, including John Connally and George Christian, shared their stories with him.
While writing his books, Caro read works by novelist Leo Tolstoy and historian Edward Gibbon. He believed well-written history is essential. "History is a story," he said. "If you’re not telling a story, you’re not being faithful to history."
Caro’s books were published by Alfred A. Knopf, first under editor Robert Gottlieb and later by Sonny Mehta. Gottlieb remained Caro’s main editor, even after leaving Knopf temporarily. Caro described their relationship as challenging but rewarding. After Gottlieb and Mehta passed away, Caro’s longtime editor, Kathy Hourigan, took over.
A 2022 documentary, Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, explored Caro and Gottlieb’s collaboration.
Caro hopes to write a full memoir after completing The Years of Lyndon Johnson. His 2019 book Working is described as a "semi-memoir" about research, interviews, and writing.
When asked about future projects, Caro mentioned a biography of Al Smith, saying Smith might be the most overlooked important figure in American history.
To avoid writer’s block, Caro creates a detailed outline on a 22-foot corkboard before writing. He writes drafts by hand on legal pads and types his books on Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriters. After the typewriters were discontinued, Caro uses spare parts and receives machines from others who know his preference.
Awards and honors
Robert Caro has won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography two times. He has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year three times. In addition, he has been honored with other important literary awards, including two National Book Awards (one for Lifetime Achievement), the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize.
In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, but he could not attend.
In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, which is the highest award in the humanities in the United States. During the ceremony, the President said, "I remember reading The Power Broker when I was 22 years old and being very interested in it. I believe it helped shape how I think about politics." In 2011, Caro received the BIO Award, which is given each year by members of Biographers International to a colleague who has made a major contribution to the art and craft of writing about real people.
Family
After graduating from Princeton University, Robert Caro married Ina Joan Sloshberg, who was still a student at Connecticut College at the time. The Caros have one son, Chase Arthur, and three grandchildren who live in White Plains, New York.
Caro has said that his wife, Ina, was essential in helping him write all five of his books. To support his work on The Power Broker, she sold their home and took a teaching job. Ina is the only person other than Caro who conducted research for his books.
Ina wrote a book titled The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France (1996). Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., praised the book during a ceremony where Ina received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from The City University of New York in 2011. He called it "the essential traveling companion for all who love France and its history." A Newsweek reviewer named Peter Prescott said, "I would rather travel to France with Ina Caro than with Henry Adams or Henry James." He noted that her book’s unique idea is so original that it is surprising no one thought of it earlier. Ina often writes about her travels in France on 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.
Robert Caro had a younger brother named Michael, who was a retired real estate manager. Michael passed away in 2018.
Caro’s son, Chase, admitted in 2007 to stealing more than $750,000 from three former clients during real estate deals. In April 2008, Chase was sentenced to 2 and a half to 7 and a half years in prison for stealing $310,000 from his grandparents’ trust fund. He agreed to pay $1.1 million in restitution, which includes money from a third theft. All his sentences were served at the same time. As of 2012, Chase worked in information technology.
Legacy
Because of Robert Caro’s strong work habits and his large amount of research, many writers have been compared to him. They are described as "Caro-esque," "Caro-like," or "in the Caro mold" because of their own detailed research. These writers include Renata Adler, Wayne Barrett, Taylor Branch, David Garrow, Garrett Graff, Gerard Henderson, Jason Horowitz, Francis Jennings, Robert G. Kaiser, David Paul Kuhn, Roland Lazenby, Mark Lewisohn, David Maraniss, David McCullough, Edmund Morris, Roger Morris, David Nasaw, Les and Tamara Payne, Steven Pressfield, Michael Shnayerson, Lytton Strachey, Julia E. Sweig, William T. Vollmann, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Research Department.
In 2011, Caro’s school, Horace Mann School, started giving the Robert Caro '53 Prize for Literary Excellence in the Writing of History. The award is given each year at a ceremony held at the school’s main building. In 2017, the school named a classroom at Tillinghast Hall the "Robert A. Caro '53 History Classroom." Caro said this honor made him "hard to think of anything that would make [him] happier."
The 2019 film Motherless Brooklyn, directed by Edward Norton, was loosely based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem. The film was inspired by Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. León Krauze wrote in Slate that Norton’s character in the film resembles Caro himself.
In January 2020, the New-York Historical Society acquired Caro’s complete collection of work, which includes "200 linear feet of material." Some of this material will be digitized and made available to researchers in a special study space called the Robert A. Caro Study Space. A permanent exhibition named Robert Caro Working, inspired by Caro’s 2019 book Working, will be displayed at the Society’s library. Caro said he was "just plain delighted" because his "favorite aunt often took" him to the library, and he had also spoken there and "been a recipient of its awards."
An exhibition called "Turn Every Page": Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive opened on October 22, 2021. It became "the first permanent public exhibition of an archive devoted to a living author in the country." The title comes from advice given to Caro by Alan Hathway, then-editor of Newsday, during Caro’s first investigative assignment. Hathway told Caro, "Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page." This advice is also the title of a 2022 documentary about Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb’s collaborations, directed by Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb.