says before is so moving, and shows that the quality of the justice system can bring about redemption, grace, some kind of feeling. unfortunately, i have to tell you that we are out of time. >> ohno. >> i have no tear, yes lawyers take notes. which could take us another three or four hours, that is also the good news because people should read this book there is so much death in it and so much to learn from it and i just want to thank you for writing this. it's an honor to be here with you think is much. >> this program is available as a podcast all "after words"

programs can be viewed on our website booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> hi everybody. i am glad to see you, thank you. thank you so much for coming to tonight's program featuring robert caro and conan o'brien. [applause] i am andrew grossman the founder of writers block sailing to the end of our 23rd year. [applause] if you are not yet on the writer's block e-mail list sign-up at writer's block presents.com. this added senator amy klobuchar so writers bloc presents.com. now for tonight. we are delighted to welcome back

robert caro to writer's block. the last time he visited was in 2002 for the master of the senate. it was unforgettable. bob story about the genius of the johnson political machine painted a picture of a powerbroker extraordinaire who simply had no fear. like a subject cairo has no fear but over the years bob has spoiled us with this portrayed of lyndon johnson and treated us with left turns in the narrative. his diversions into fascinating bystanders are rich in detail and character they might form the basis of future studies and of themselves. consider his new book "working" as a companion piece to this great moses and johnson book and today in 2019 is more resonant than ever about power used for good and power used against the greater good. as the book answers for questions he raises more as

cairo gives a deep background into the ways he does what he does with such graceful shorthand. this is a book isn't evidence enough that is why he takes along to crank out the next volume robert caro gives the background when he goes through every sheet of paper and every file to get to the truth that essence of political power. while robert caro is about political power at scone and who possesses media properties late-night comedy speaks to his own drum and he is without question respected as one of the funniest guys on the planet. that one enough because an armchair presidential scholar and achingly ardent devotee. no matter what koning offers here's a guy who calls the johnson series our harry potter.

[laughter] .. >> until tonight everybody. so here is what is going to happen. conan and bob will check and then feel free to ask very, very brief questions, like one sentence. there are mics that will be in the aisle and "after words" bubble sign copies of working and one copy of another book of his. but to get the other books assigned you have to have a copy of working. if you have not purchased working already, i don't know why you haven't, do it tonight.

you know that he does not come to l.a. often for book signing and remember the last time he visited was in 2000 to 17 years ago so don't wait another 17 years. i know all of you want to get pictures of conan and bob together. but we want you to put yourself on the way and enjoy the program so when i bring these two great guys out i want you to stand up and take pictures for 30 seconds, you can take all the pictures you want and then you put your phone away. [applause] it is such a great pleasure to introduce bob caro and conan o'brien. [applause] [inaudible]

[applause] >> this is an absolute thrill for me it is no secret that mr. caro that i pursue you. you have been my white will and i think the new york times referred to you as you the white whale to my ahab and tonight headquartered you and there is no getting away and this is a thrill of a lifetime. thank you so much for sitting down with me, really. [applause] >> it doesn't take any quartering. it's a wonderful story that you started reading my books in college instead of going to fort lauderdale and getting hammered which is what i did.

[laughter] >> i skipped spring break and my roommate and i read his book and did not get is from break in the backstage you told me, you idiot, i went to spring break. [laughter] i also want to thank you for finally writing a book that will fit on my night table. thank you. it's a delight, there is so much to talk about and i am going to start with one demand. i am the moderator tonight and i'm going to make a strict and simple demand i will allow any question after i'm done interviewing mr. caro except one, tonight no one is allowed to ask this man when is the next lyndon johnson book coming out. i prepared the question. [laughter] i forbid it. people are constantly bothering this man. when is a book going to come out and i find it a rude -- i talked to a friend of mine and he said

you're going to be speaking at a temple so you should use the phrase die a new, it means it would have been enough. and i maintain that when people bother mr. caro about when is the next book going to come out my answer to them is we just wrote the powerbroker it would've been enough. [applause] had he just written past the power it would've been enough, had he written each one of these books, we will get this next book when he is damn well ready to give it to us, and we will start with that, he good with that? >> yeah. >> i'm not going to let you talk it off. [laughter] i finally got you and i'm not going to let you speak.

[laughter] mr. caro, i love the book working, and i'll tell you why i have read all of your work in i'm a huge fan and i knew you were through as a researcher and writer but i had no idea until i read this book that i used so many words of dedicated, compulsive, committed, you have a phrase that your talk very early. i like you to talk about a little bit. a man at newsday, what are your first jobs told you when you're doing research, turn every page. turn every page, you took it literally and i think it better than any biographer in the history of the written word. tell us about that, i was a young reporter still doing short

stories and so by accident i got thrown into an investigative and had to go through a bunch of files of federal agencies and i came back for the real reporters who would write the stories the next day. and we had a managing editor, alan hathaway was an old guy from the 1920s, he was a guy with a big head and hair around the back, the head was very red because he started drinking very early in the day. [laughter] we never knew that when alan graduated from college or went to college but he really was against people from prestigious universities, i went to princeton and they hired me while he was on vacation as a joke on him. [laughter] so he would walk by my desk every day to his office and he

never talk to me. and i would say good morning mre would never even answer me. so this one day i had to go down because everyone else was on a picnic and they cannot be reached because they did not have cell phones and i wrote a long memo in the next morning very early his secretary called me and said alan wants to see you right away and i said, you see i was right not to move and i'm about to be fired. and all the way into the office i was sure it was going to be fired and the secretary said going. he had a glass enclosed door, and i see this big red head bent over reading something very intensely, as i got to his door i saw it was my memo that he was reading. and he weighed me to it a chair and after a while he looked up and he said i didn't know

someone from princeton could go through files like this. from now on you do investigative work. i have great affair like this and when i said to him, because i don't know anything about investigative work and he looked at me for what i remember as a very long time, and said just remember one thing. turn every page. never assume anything, turn every leap page. and i can't tell you how many times in my life that stuck with me and really resulted in me finding myself. >> there so many times and you state in the book, where you are maybe a document away from this great discovery and you're in these massive rooms filled with documents and you don't think you're going to find anything

and you think this is a waste of time but you do it anyway and that is where you find the documents doubles everything apart. >> that has happened a number of times. i can tell you one example, when i was doing lyndon johnson he comes to congress 291937 and you can't go through every page in the johnson but i really want to paint a picture of what the congress is life was like in the first years. so go over page in these ten or 11 boxes. there were innocuous lover lett. and i would think i'm wasting another month of my life. and all of a sudden there was a change. at a certain point, the point was october 1940, before that he had been the junior congressman

rising to senior congressman, or whatever. there fo after election day november 5, 1940, all of the letters from committee chairman and congressman were lyndon can i have five minutes of your time. so the i was then interviewing an old, i don't think anyone is old enough to remember him, and old washington fixer, tommy, and i said to them, what happened october 1940? and he said, money kid. he used to call me kid, money kid. but he said he will never be able to write about that kid and i said why not, he said lyndon never put anything in writing. but i'm going to these things and going through one innocuous letter after another and all of a sudden the next document is

updated weston union telegraph form from october 19, 1940 it's from george brown which is the texas firm which is financing lyndon johnson and he is getting them increasingly big federal contracts. in the telegram says the checks are on the way. and he replies, i am not mentioning, not responding or telling anyone about the so you think that. the six names were in there and because they were there i can cross reference to their letters and find who they were. when that happened you say oh i'm going to keep going and one of the most remarkable documents that ever came across, it was

six pages long and both of johnson's assistance joined him later as secretary they said they told me that they had typed it, whoever typed it, this is what it was, there were two types of columns, and then left him: was the name of the congress, in the center congress was how much money he wants and what he needed for, the amounts are so small it's almost a joke. need $450 for last-minute items. when they try to steal at the polls. >> that the same i get today. [laughter] >> but in the left-hand column, in lyndon johnson's own handwriting he wrote that he was going to give the person the full amount of money that he

asked for, he wrote okay. if he was going to give them part of the money he would write okay and then the amount, okay 300, okay 500. but for some of them he wrote none. for some of them he wrote none, out. and i asked him what it meant when he wrote none, out. and he said to me, i still remember this, that guy was never going to get any money from lyndon johnson. he never forgot any never forgave. so in this one month somehow congress became aware that if you wanted money from texas you had to go to the junior congressman and all the sudden he was on his road to national power. >> what is fascinating to me is the tenacity there to touch every document, to turn it over to read everything even if you

have to go through 5000 boxes, he will go through all 5000 boxes just in case. the flipside of that, which i think is completely unprecedented is you need to have a sense of place, you robert caro need to have a sense of place when you're writing about these people. these men, these powerful men. so you decided when you're writing about lyndon johnson that you can write about him and that she lived in the hill country, you went in the live there. and we need to give a shout out right now to your incredible wife who i think is here tonight. [applause] there she is. stand up. you said to your wife, we need to move to the hill country in texas and lived there for possibly a year or two in order for me to it really write about lyndon johnson and she gave a very different answer from what

my wife, who is also here tonight would say. she said let's go. and that is absolutely incredible. >> that is not what she said. [laughter] she said why can't you write a biography of napoleon. [laughter] >> but you move to the hill country and it worked because there are a lot of people who wouldn't talk to you but once you and your wife are living there you could understand the people and they agree to accept you and people started to talk about lyndon johnson who would not have spoken to you before. >> who didn't speak. i always think, you're the best interviewer but i was thought it was a good interviewer but the people i can get to talk to me were the people of the hill

country, the hill country start at the western edge and went on for 300 miles. there were hardly any people there. you get directions to interview somebody and they would say something like, you drive 47 miles out of austin and watch for the cattle guard and then turn left and you might go 30 miles on a rugged unpaved road. and at the end would be house. and you suddenly realize i haven't passed the house and 30 miles. these people were so lonely they just weren't used to talking to people and what you said before is such a perceptive remark when talking before, they believed i was wrong to say anything they are rogatory about who became president of the nugget essays. >> they thought it was unpatriotic that the man had

become president but you don't say bad things about presidents. and man have time changed. [laughter] there is a really striking moment where one of lyndon johnson's relatives, they were trained to explain it so pivotal in his life that his father was his idol and that his father had a ranch in a failed. the family became a laughing stock and you are trained to understand that failure. one of the relatives made you kneel down and put your hands in the soil of that ranch and you realized that it was only soil for about an inch or two and that it was wrong. >> his father -- it looks so beautiful when you come to the ranch. it's covered with grass and all. but as soon -- there was a

little soil on top of the rock that as soon as you try to do anything with it, to grow cotton or graze cattle, the grass and washed away, and i didn't realize this, i sort of thought lyndon's father was a wonderful legislator, wonderful man in lyndon's favorite cousin really didn't like him. and the way i talked. she said get out of the car, kneel down and stick your fingers into the ground. it looks so beautiful but just what you said i couldn't even get the like of my fingers in it. and because lyndon johnson's father did not realize it and made this mistake the family was ruined. >> they were ruined, he was humiliated and so then there is this change in lyndon johnson. and there is is real bitterness

and the problem between the father and son. any other biographer would say, a written reading these articles and get nephew accounts here and there between the trouble of the father and son. but you really wanted to understand and you did something that blows my mind, i did not know about it until i read the book working. he went to his brother sam and you wanted sam to get you back to the moment, he wanted to understand what it was like, lyndon sitting with his father during that period of the solution. so you did a thing, and acting teacher might do. it is very unusual, you took sam to the actual house and you had him sit at the table, the house was obvious and re-created, you had him sit at the table where he would sit and you set behind him where he cannot see you. and you prodded him over and over and over again in a really intense way to remember what it was like. and then suddenly he did and he started talking. so just talk about those

conversations he remembered. >> because he -- yes -- can i say what i want? >> say whatever you want. >> when i started of course one of the first people i wanted to see was sam, it was lyndon's little brother. and he had a reputation of being a very heavy drinker and being a guy full of bravado and braggadocio. i thought that was true. most of the stuff that he told me, he toby this wonderful story but when you tested out they were untrue. so i said i wasted enough time with him i am not going to talk to him anymore. so in the interim in the next year so i heard he had a terrible operation for cancer and that he stopped drinking in one day and walking around, i used to walk around this little town trying to get to know the

people. and there he was coming towards me, he was a different man. he had a cane, hobbling, and when i started to talk to him i said this is really a different guy. so i decided to try again. anyway this time exactly what you said, whatever the secret of lyndon johnson's desperate ambition, and desperate desire to succeed had to do with his relationship with his father who he idolized until he was 12 or 13 years old. he said the happiest days of my life, his father was a legislator, the happiest days of my life was going with my father on a camping trip. and then his father makes the one mistake, he loses the johnson ranch and for the rest of lyndon johnson's boyhood they live in a house that every month there literally afraid it's going to be taken away.

there is often no food in the house because his mother was sick, neighbors had to come and bring dishes from charity. in lyndon johnson's feelings towards his father changed from love to real real hatred. i really wanted to get a picture of what it was like. so as you say, i got the national -- so i thought of an idea that might get him to remember accurately. and i got them to say i could take him into the johnson boyhood home and re-create it in johnson city, after all the tourists were gone and we were alone. and i decided to take them at dinnertime which is about 6:00 o'clock. it would be much like in there when he was a boy. and as you say, i asked him to sit in his place at the table,

his father said at one end of the table, the mother and at the other end and there was a bench on the one side with the three sisters and the other side was lyndon and sam. so i did in fact sit behind him because i didn't want anything to distract him. and i said tell me again about these arguments that lyndon and his father had a dinner. and at first he was really slow unremembered. and then i'd have to say and then what, and then what but then suddenly he was going fast and then suddenly he was shouting a conversation. lyndon you're a failure, you'll always be a failure. your bus instructor that's what you are. i felt like he was back at his boyhood and i said now sam i want you to tell me again all those wonderful stories about lyndon growing up that you told me before and that everybody else has been telling me only give me a few more details. and there was a long pause and

finally he said i can't. and i said why not, and he said because they never happened. and then without another word i didn't have to do anything he just started telling me a very different story about lyndon johnson growing up. and this time when i went back to the other people who were involved they said yes, that is what happened and they give me more detail. >> it was a story on johnson before you book was a typical ratio rags to riches, everyone loved him he was popular, and you went back into the process which is very unusual and takes a lot of time you at this completely different picture. even down to noticing when you're looking at his old yearbooks in high school, it took you a while but you find

out pages were missing in the same pages were missing from all the yearbooks because he was unfavorable. in lyndon johnson had them removed. who does that? [laughter] as a level -- it took you a long time to figure that out and when you do any found the pages he found that people didn't like him in school. >> no. he had the nickname little johnson and it means what do you think it is. but when you came across, and someone said to you why are you bothering me with these questions. it's all there in black and white. and i said where in black and white? and he said in the yearbook, and i said i must've missed those pages and she had a copy with the pages still in their room when i turned to those pages they were gone. and there are moments that i say

what sort of an individual am i dealing with. he is 21 years old and he takes the trouble and has his pages cut out of almost all the copies of the college yearbook. and he didn't do it when he was president, he knew at 21 he had to get rid of those pages. it was an amazing thing. >> it's interesting and i'm curious if it's a incidence or not. you've chosen two men, moses and johnson to devote your life to writing about in both of those men went to great extremes than anybody would tie their past as if they were living in that you be coming for them one day. [lau ghyou chose to -- you chose thee

two guys that went to great extremes to not write anything down one of them is at the age of 21 cutting down unfavorable pictures and notices from his yearbook. you chose incredibly difficult people to readad about. >> not deliberately. [laughter] there might be some connection. you might have had something. there is a line in the book that struck me that i wanted to bring up to you. people think of history as dry in your life work has been you don't believe that it should be mpy you think it should be alive. it's very important to you and one of the things you think about and you write it inhi this book question you asked a lot is their desperation on this page. it's their desperation on the page and that is something you ask yourself every time you write a page.

>> you read this very carefully. [laughter] i always felt, and it's something i always did feel if a book of nonfiction or biography is going to be successful, it's got to have the same qualities a novel has to be successful. o's got to have read them in aa sense of place, that sort of thing. what you are talking about is last chance running for senate in 1948. if he loses his political career it's going to be over. he gets b a kidney stone and hes behind his opponent when he started test is in the hospital i think for a. when he comes out he is so far behind that he can't think of a way of getting that and he

thinks of this is a brand-new thing in 1948. if i can gain around all of these small towns, people will come out and call this a machine that stand spoke -- he said you have three helicopter pilots to alternate and i said i'm going to talk to them. they probably don't have anything to say to me, but you never know. they've all told me amazing thing. he was so excited he would clean out the -- [laughter]

i said you have a picture here of a desperate man. this is his last chance, and i did exactly what you said. i put a note on my desk and i tried to do that in the rhythm. i actually don't think i succeeded very well, but i tried. >> you succeeded. [laughter] you are careless as an interviewer. i try to sometimes put myself what if i were robert caro could i do this and i think know i could not. one of the things i found that you talk about in working if you uncovered lyndon johnson had a mistress named alex glass. you uncovered that. it hasn't been discussed, and shortly after you find that out, you get a call from the office

of lady byrd johnson and she says that she would like to speak to you and talk with you and you know that she knows that you know. [laughter]no you went to that interview because they were never interested but now suddenly soere was something relevant to his career. you went and i was thinking could i go and sit with the former first lady if she knew what i knew and it's terrible to even think about what is that like. [laughter] >> you can do whatever you want to do. >> i wasn't going to write about all of the lyndon johnson affairs, because almost all of them were not if one night stands, two night stands and didn't have any significanceig o them. i can't remember if it is in the book or not i'm reading all the

letters when johnson was in australia during the second world war one callback to the united states i knew that franklin roosevelt had taken johnson is a protége and said to him if you need any advice on him, and you can call the white houswhitehouse and all of a sudi am going through, there is a telegram and it says everybody else thinks you should run for the senate. i think you should run for the house. i had no idea who analyst was. nobody really knew this name. shortly after that, it is just luck that it happened to me.

when you sit in the reading room with the library at the desk and if there is a call that has to go through i go up to the desk and the host at the lobby says there are two women who would like to speak to you. so i sat down and they said to me we read the powerbrokers do we know that you are going to find out about alice. [laughter] we want to tell you about her because she was really important in lyndon's life. so, to find out about her she came from a little town she was a great postage and washington.

i never though thought i would d talk to all of her friends that she grew up with and try to get a picture of her. i have to say i hope there is no one here from garland texas, no one would go to marlon except for any other reason. i got a call from a mutual friend who lived there that said in texas everyone called lady bird bird. she was of immense help to me and i was interviewing her in the office and all of a sudden the secretary was standingd aty desk and saying this saturday she would like you to come to the ran should and do everything

they are. so, we sat down at this table, she sat at the head of the tablt and i sat with my stenographers notebook i take notes in. without a word of preamble she talks about how beautiful and elegant she was and since i s,member her in a series of the most beautiful dresses. whatever talk, he followed the rest as a 21-year-old congressman and she said turn them tolo your advantage but she alsoio said at various times in

his life she saved his political career and one was dramatic to me because this very fierce battle -- bad temper it suddenly came to a coalition point not long after johnson came to congress. at the same time you wanted to build a low-income housing project in austin and it was mostly mexican americans in this tighborhood he owned most of the houses and was getting a good income arranged by this and the chief lobbyist said to me herman was about to turn and

went herman turned on you he never turned back. >> she couldn't afford this cous coalition. >> they were providing the money eo finance his own career and analysts said just add them to emy estate in virginia and she sat at theim table and said thee is an easy compromise. there were various times in his life when he went to her for igadvice and it was like a 20, 5 year. of course i don't know this since it ended in two or three years but even when he was vice president, years later he wouldp drive down he would spend days

with her. >> so you are in a room with lady bird johnson and it goes unsaid tha but it was a sexual relationship even though she would have undoubtedly known to us. >> i didn't quite get that question. >> it was pretty dirty. [laughter] im and embarrassed now. [laughter] i am trying to think of another journalist or biographer who has sat with a former first lady and discuss the captivating moment it doesn't happen much and obviously you've never talked about that aspect of it, but i don'tal think that happens. >> i have to say it is the only interview that i've ever had where i could bear to look at a person i was interviewing even once. she talked and i kept taking notes.

>> you talk a lot about your process and that's one of the things we want to talk about here. we talk about your need to hold that the documents, turcould tun every page, go to the actual place whether it is to fill, capitol hill experience with those people experience so you can really feel it. another part of the process used you write everything out longhand and use it with it for a while before you go to the typewriter. you'd use an electric typewriter, is that right, i give ifumigate prosecutor now. [laughter] what is it about that process became your process and why does that help to write it out first hand and why did you never graduates to what everyone else is using, which is a computer? >> that is a good question. because i am too fast, and i've

always been too fast. when i was at princeton the incident that was formative when i was at princeton i was at a creative writing course and it was taught by a southern general and in a literary. i took the course for two years and every two weeks and handed in a short story. i always had good marks. i thought i was fooling him because i was always doing these short stories and it was easy for me to writeas a fair so i would write them tonight before and i remember we used to call it pulling all nighters. i thought i was fooling them about how much work went in today. i then at the last session he handed back my short story and said something complimentary about it which he usually did, and then he said but you know you will ever achieve what you want to achieve unless you stop

thinking with your fingers and you know how sometimes in your life you realize that someone has seen right through you. he knew that i never put any effort into this and that it was too easy for me to write. then i went to newsday and when i quit and i started to realize how complex this was a traitor to explain how robert moses got his power and iran under thinking i have to make myself not only think about things but think about them all the way which was really hard for me. so, i decided to slow myself down and that is why i write my first draft longhand. >> then you do revisionsd there and put them on the board and you are a slow craftsman, you

are very methodical about it. >> you are very complementary standard for biography is so high and you will spend years working on one phase of a book. your standards are so high is it difficult to sit down and enjoy someone else's biography i don't think that's right. i don't have that feeling of the

biography. there's a lot of terrific biographies out there. >> okay. that was no fun. [laughter] >> i'm out of my reach. >> no, that's me. there are so many times in the book you describe moments of your career, and again this struck me how important you feel imagination is for a biographer, and first i would think no, a biographer doesn't need imagination. you get the documents and talkh with the people and do the right word then you construct a narrative, so imagination doesn't really come into that. but it was clear to me when i read working that you have an ad played imagination and spend a lot of time when you would find

out about a moment to say in moses life he was trying to imagine what he could do in the west side off manhattan when it was just mud and a dirty train coming through and what he needed to feel as he would go up there and stand and look at that spot and you've re-created in a novelistic way that it's biography and it'sog compelling imagination is key. >> imagination is key but it's a biography. you can't unless you have a fact the reason i was able to talk about how robert moses envisioned the whole west sidee highway is huge great public works project because i read one

day frances perkins later rose up as the secretary of labor but when she was a young woman, she and robert moses used to walk around and one day she wrote in her history one day they were going to a picnic in new jersey so they start out and now at that time the north-central railroad train were going to the slaughterhouse is and there was a constant small but all over the western shoreline of manhattan. the spell was bad and the city couldn't get near the waterfront and all of a sudden she heard robert moses.

suddenly she heard robert saying what can thiwithin this be the t beautiful thing in the world and i will have to build around the curb the baseball field should be there. that is exactly how he built it finally got the bill 25 years later so that you can put things together because people told me how many afternoons he would come back from work and he would've told the taxi to take them all the way over to riverside drive and he's a lower-level municipal stamper.

it took him 25 years but he did it so when we have that fact you could say -- >> you need the legwork and the mortar of imagination. >> splenic terrific writer. [laughter] you talk about something very personal in this book. you say that you did not grow up in a house of books that wasn't

part of something that was important to your data. your mother came here when you were quite young and she had a dying wish that changed the trajectory of your life. >> my mother got sick when i was five. those days if you have breast cancer and it came back it was really nothing they could do for you, so she died when i was 11. my father spoke english and this language with his friends was a fish, not english but my mother made me promise not to send him

to the school and therefore it became a center of my boyhood. >> and it was here that you got your first taste of journalism. >> they worked on the paper and became editor and to this day, i know when i had dinner with two or three guys who worked with me on the records years ago. so the first remarkable thing is we are all still alive. [laughter] if we get it from the tabl up fd haven't set a date for the next meeting someone says you didn't set a date this is what is keeping us alive, it will work. [laughter]

>> and you have said you snagged every prestigious prize one could get in the field. you'd think the biggest honor is the one for this man gave you. [laughter] this is a big deal. >> they were together in the power. >> some years ago they said they would like to name the cries so i said that would be great if it was something i believed in and it would be nice what do you

want. so i said earlier in the interview i feel it is very important and not sufficiently understood that if you want a history or biography to endure the level off the writing has to be the same as the awful. if you read this and say why do people still read it, try reading the consensus. so they named the prize for this man prized literary excellence, and the writing of history for the prize and the literary e excellence. and that is the biggest thrill to go up there and now they say the number of submissions that number increases and this one

professor that is administered so that makes me feel totally great. >> to also come full circle and to come back now and in your name these kids are getting the price. >> sometimes i win an award it's like it happens to somebody else, but this has been, this is me what happens. >> it occurred to me reading about these men you write about

and that you have devoted your life to the something in common they never saw anybody work that hard,o and it occurred to me tht your book is called working. the work ethic and obviously you were born with these incredible talents, but your work ethic to be at this for years at the time bears some similarity to the people that you write about. do you think that is fair to say? >> i think that is one of the things i find in spidering about you and this book we live in the era of attention deficit

disorder you took a vow to work on the moses began to disappear for seven, eight, nine years with no real evidence that this would be a big success. the bed is the culture that we are in today, this devotion to work and devotion to doing your work and doing it well. i do that you found a lot of unfavorable things about these people that you've written anut, but there's also amazing qualities about them, and like you both of them were hincredibly hard-working people coming and that most resonates with you. >> that is very perceptive.

there are unbelievable amount of work. you do lots of things as a writer to try to remind yourself, like my publishers better ask me when are you going to deliver. it takes me so many years that it's easy to fool yourself that nobody is checking up on you or anything so i do everything i can the truth is when i was young people wore ties and jackets to work just to remind

yourself it is a job you have to produce. >> one thing struck me look at the cover of the book. it is you posing in your office where you work and i was thinking you don't really have a boss. you are ithe one in this room ae working, you have a strong workt ethic. >> that is sort of their signal. you think you would like to get up at 7:30 that the truth is i'm telling you all this stuff i don't usually talk about. [laughter] they said to me a few years ago do you remember what tim time is and i said don't tell me yet. i don't want to know. >> what's interesting is hemingway technique is that he

always used to say i would stop before the well was dry in b the evening so that i knew i could have a beginning in the morning. do you ever think about that?ve >> you are the first person that has mentioned it. [laughter] >> i'm doing some real stuff here and i'm not doing it. [laughter] >> terrific questions i must say one of the things he said i always stop when i know what the next sentence is going to be so i can start the next day. that is the best piece of advice

i ever got. >> it stopped a little shy of what you had that day. >> then i have the human question you are in there in that office it is 3:00 inn the anternoon, you know you are supposed to do more words but do you ever thinking here on the upper west side. i could pop out and see a movie. do you ever do that, just sneak out and see a movie and she doesn't have to know about it? [laughter] the avengers movie or something? [laughter] >> never in my entire life. >> it is a good movie. [laughter] >> i want to take the one-day come and knock on your office with prepaid tickets and take you to the movie. would you go witwhere do you god that? 's >> if i don't answer it because i'm so deep in the works. [laughter] >> that's what they all say. [laughter]

that's whatt every girl said to me when i asked her out. i don't answer indeed in the works. [laughter] i'm going to open up to questions now from the audience. we will take it from there. how long should i do for questions? fifteen minutes flex >> [inaudible] okay. thanks so much for flying down here. i love your work. i'm a huge fan. my girlfriend is sick of me mentioning you at dinner parties. so, i went on a rant of "the new york times" piece i finally found my kindred spirit. i'm wondering how you ended up writing or working on this piece about robert caro and then

finally how did you have to wait outside? 's >> you are asking the wrong question here. basically i didn't write this piece. a good writer is here tonight. he heard about this rumor that i was obsessed with mr. ichiro in an unhealthy way. and he wrote that. i don't did this man i used "the new york times" to build him and it is the greatest thing i've ever done. [laughter] >> questions for robert, not for me. >> is there anything for moses were johnson that he found inspirational or as applied in your own life what to do or how to be or what not to do or how not to be?

is there anything you feel you and from the personalitwent frot you have applied in your own life? >> that is such a good question. >> with both of them i guess i never put it in the turns before. terms before. you feel the most important thing is to keep working at something. i guess it was 1912 he didn't get the bill from 1937. he'd been trying for 35 years. he envisioned it possible to create something like that and johnson got the book i'm writing

right now you see that he's passing both a social welfare legislation medicare, medicaid, the civil rights act, the voting rights act. you say he's working all the time to change the votes in the senate and it's very impressive to me i don't know if i took anything from it. never really stopped. yeyes, sir. >> thank you so much for coming here and doing this. thank you for your books. it seemed the next book would cover the presidency. at what point did you realize the presidency had to be dividen into two books the passage of power and the one coming up?

he's wondering at what point did you decide johnson's presidency would require more than just one that? >> each had the power in detail for me than i realized there was this incredible story those of you that read the book and those of you that haven't they were telling stories about johnson even as a young man but then

they would say no matter what london is like we loved him and it took a while fo for that to k in that they wer but they were t electricity. what did this mean quite i was a city boy for turning on the lights as electricity. this is incredible, to create the hydroelectric power and then not thousands but tens of thousands and as soon as they did it he would have to do everything by hand so he said i'm going to tell that story. i also said no, it is hard to

show what the government can dot for people. i think we've forgotten that what was it like when you lost w your job and had to retire we are working on a section right now what it's like to be old and sick in america before the caregiver they revolutionized everything. it's hard to show that if you are talking about a city project because there's all these crosscurrents. economic background, social programs, you know, other amendments etc.. about here we have the congressional district in the middle of this isolated country. the only thing that changes is

let's examine what he did for these people and i can show the effect of how the government can help. so i constantly come across the sand and i never thought of this. i want to i do this. so tha that this would fix is ws long. [laughter] >> at the end of the most recent volume passage of power, you start writing about vietnam. a lot of people including me have speculated that had president kennedy lived, he probably wouldn't have gotten all the domestic legislation johnson got, but maybe we wouldn't have gotten mired in vietnam. what do you think of this speculation? >> about the legislation wasn't going anywhere.

he was a great president and could enunciate the best of america but the fact is on the day he was assassinated, it was never going to get past, johnson, legislative genius picked that up as far as now i'm going to take a sort of pass on that question. i haven't written it yet. or even really thought it completely through. certainly the vietnam thing as it turns out was a horrible story. what you share with u us what first led you to select robert moses and then lyndon johnson as the subject for the life work? 's

>> did you all hear that question? i was a reporter on newsday and i got interested in the politics and giving work, so i had a couple of minor journalistic awards but when you are young and then anything, so i'd really thought i understood how political power worked. then the following, he wanted to rbuild yet another bridge. he wanted to build a bridge and it was a terrible idea because i recall that the express way would have needed 12 extra rains

and would have caused pollution so i wrote those stories into those nelson rockefeller and the council everyone understood this was the world's worst idea. he calls me and says you better come back up your and i say something like i don't think i have to bother. i took care of that bridge. robert moses was a pure yesterday and i think you ought to come back up so i came back up and it was one of the revelations of my life i spoke to the same people they thought

it was the world's greatest id haea. you think you live in a democracy here is a guy that was never elected to anything but he hathathe has more power than any that was, if more power than any mayor or governor put together and he has held that g this powr for 44 years and with it he shapes his whole metropolitan area. a you two is supposed to know about power, you have no idea where he got this power and nor does anyone else. so, that was the moment when i started thinking about it, but i didn't really have time to think about it as a book because as a

reporter you don't get a chance to think that maybe god did it became known that he university which means you go to harvard for a year while you study these things out. that was the first that i remembered that year. i was alone at a lot of the time and the foundation used to have a look at social events and i don't like to go to social events by myself, so i spent a lot of time in this little office andof i thought of the ia of the power broker. when i finished robert moses, i thought it was a but not about him, but it is about power and cities. i wanted to do national power. >> you mentioned at the end of working in the interview that he once met or saw lyndon johnson, and i was curious on the

circumstances about the one time in your life that you actually saw in the flesh lyndon johnson. >> the one time i saw him, i never crossed him or anything, i was a substitute political reporter when her ran against goldwater. he came across the pricelin pree and we shook hands but i think that is the only time i saw him in the flesh. >> this is even more of an honor it was hard to get a lot of the people closest to him to talk and find the books came out, you've got attacked a lot by nobody more than jack and ben he

praised you did that make it easy to get interviews? >> is asking after the early books came out, you took a lot of heat from johnson's friend especially jack. then he said he turned around and started to praise you, and i think the question was did that mean a lot to you? 's >> a lot of the people that attacked me and wouldn't talkhoo me at the beginning they almost all came around and that was very helpful. i was in austin last night

[inaudible] [laughter] to jump in quickly i always heard your books are not sold at the johnson library if you go to the gift shop they are not sold is that true? >> they were not sold for a number of years the now they do sellow them and the fact there'a wonderful dinner that the library had last night actually the president of the lyndon johnson foundation said that they regretted the hostility towards me. >> that's fantastic. that's amazing. [applause] >> is there any chance a new

edition of power broker could be restored but as the 300,000 words that your publisher forced you to cut? >> you live in hope. my publisher would like to publish and i would like to publish but it's not so easy to do that you don't just put it back into the book so it is a lot of work to do it but i hope to, yes. >> if you worked on a word processor or computer you could hit one button and it would restore immediately. [laughter] do with that what you will. >> would you please comment on the operation texas and johnson's preference for judaism? there is something called operation texas. are you familiar with that?

>> by a retired history teacher i read a powerbroker and all the johnson books twice and i think it speaks to a lot of people here when i tell you you are the finest biographer. [applause] >> i hope you heard that. it is here that? r> my question is this. jon sijohnson had a number of important mentors along the way, men and women, rayburn, richard russell. is there one that you might point to that you thought was the most pivotal? 'snt >> who was the most important to you think of all of the mentors?

's >> the three that you mentioned which i call the three hours, roosevelt, rayburn and brussels, they were all equally russell and rayburn share two characteristics they were both bachelors and this incredibly lonely men. johnson would indict people to his house for sunday brunch for dinner, lady bird would make them feel at home. he spent as much time with them as he possibly could. they werein instrumental in raising him to power. roosevelt was sort of different. it's interesting that roosevelt never made protéges of young congressman. i started to realize there was one exception to this, there was lyndon johnson often roosevelt

would say come have breakfast with me and johnson would have breakfast with him. i said to a man named james wrote was an adviser to roosevelt and friend of johnson i said what's needed is different to franklin roosevelt and he said roosevelt was a political genius almost no one understood what he was talking about. lyndon johnson understood it all and roosevelt sold out. roosevelt once said if i'd gone to t southwest texas i would hae turned out like that. yes sir. >> when you are doing interviews can't people you talk to our aware they are talking of history and care about how they

look. how do you decide what to believe, what they are shading and what they are not. >> how do i decide what to believe in the interviews flex >> i never believe what is told to me. ovaughter] you interview people over and over again. i think i have 22 interviews with one of johnson's a have several hundred pages of typed nodes. then you go to the other people who are involved in the story and to ask them the same questions and then you go back to the first person and you say you said so and so. how do you reconcile that? it's very laborious and then of course for so much of johnson ubiquitin nodes you are never allowed to have them be taken but somebody had to take notes

so you check against the nodes. one way or another a lot of people they are not trying to mislead you they just told you thathe story so many times they think it's true but often it's not. >> who were the most important influences on the other biographers put you in your process? >> i can tell you who the most important was. gibbons. we had to read a part of the time i was at princeton and i remember i was captivated. he's such a great writer. his sentences, i heard you say what makes history and/or? to me it has to be written really well. there's a lot of other historians one way or another

that have influenced me, but he stands alone. >> thank you for being here and for your work. i am a journalist with aspirations of writing, and i'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to your relationship especially at the beginning of your career because for instance was a story that you have to sell your house to cover your living expenses while finishing the powerbroker and i'm just wondering whether any doubts was present for yount or if that is just a chip that's missing? [laughter] >> that is a good question. it's one i was interested in bringing a pan she's asking basically you sold your home to pay for the powerbroker at one

point. your back goes out and you are saying you have no money, she's going and getting the records for you and you are telling her take a left, take a right, go to this, and so the question is did you doubt -- how did you deal with doubt lying there with no money, writing a book you are not sure how long it is going to take. i believe your wife had to go to work andrk support you. god, how do you fight that out a lot of uss would have about what have i done. >> i didn't fight it very successfully.s it was a big part of my life for a long time. the first editor i had wasn't the same publishing house.

i got an advance of $5,000 so i didn't have any savings and i got the grant from the foundation that got me one year. i thought i was going to be done in nine months. i told her we would finally get to go to france but then we were really out of money. i came home one day and she said he sold the house. unfortunately it was before the real estate boom so we sold it for $70,000, $25,000 then weaver

just broke the next couple of years i just remember how he wrote haliwrote half a million n the original manuscript. i gave it to my editor who took a long time to return my telephone calls and then he took me to a very inexpensive chinese restaurant. [laughter] i remember he said we liked the book and i said basically can we have the other $2,500 he said to me sentences stick in your mind forever he said i guess you didn't understand me. we liked the book and we want you to, continue it but nobody s going to read a book on robert moses. you have to be prepared for sports and end we are not prepared to go beyond the terms of the contract to get the other

$2,500 so that was a very bad period. i had sort of run out of places to get money and luckily for me not long after that the editor with the publishing house so i could leave and they didn't have an agent, i signed my contract without an agent and a new now i had to get one so i got an agent and they've remember she called and said to me come and see me. she said i like your manuscript and i want to represent you but you have to tell me something but do you look so worried about

and i said i didn't know i looked worried. i said i'm worried i won't have enough money to finish the book. she said how much are you talking. it was enough to live on for two years it wasn't much and she looked at me and said that that's what you're worried about because this other editor made me feel no one cared about the book and she said is that what you're worried about? you can stop worrying right now. i can get that for you by picking up his telephone. everybody in new york knows about the book, so financially my life turnedly around and. [applause]ha ..

and i guess i'm just wondering if knowing lyndon johnson as well as you do, does this make this president more excruciating or do you have a feeling of this too shall pass and we can get on with the next? >> i think it's too early to tell you. we don't know if he's a normal variation. >> we had a discussion backstage wondering if he was an outlier who has hisis crazy set of skils or characteristics that allowed him to do this needle in this moment at this particular time and once he is passed, that's it. or is he a sign of something to come. we were talking about that very thing entrancing thing

backstage. >> i don't know the answer to that. i don't think we know the answer yet. >> hi, and think you both for your passion in your scholarship. i would like to know what advice you give to a room full of writers in an age where perhaps people's attention spans are wondering, maybe not in this room but in the rest of life. what advice would you give to new writers? >> in this age of wondering attention spans, what advice would you give to writers now when things can seem a little dire for the process they have dedicated your life too? >> i don't have any advice to give the raiders, i think

everybody has to find their own way. i certainly do not think my way is necessarily the best way, it is just my way. i think it is a very tough time for writers, but i happen to think that time is already starting to turn back, the sales of books have leveled off and people keep saying attention spans are shorter and shorter, the only field that i know anything about, the presidential biographies. so david's book on truman was about 1100 pages, that sold many more copies than other presidential biographies. doris' book a team of rivals, is 860 wages. she sold hundreds of those. i can name others. i think the proof is everywhere around us. that not necessarily our

intentions fans are all getting shorter. . . . always a desire to find out how it really happens. i don't thank you find that out there. [applause] >> thank you. [applause], [applause] he will be signing in the foyer.

we'll see you soon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] sciene and history in medicine and that will begin in about 30 minutes. joining us now on the set at the university of southern california's author james >> here at the university of southern california, here is james donovan, it is culture for the men, the space race an extraordinary voyage of apollo 11. before we get to july of 1969, let's start 1957, 1958. what was the effect of sputnik. it created a sensation in this country.