>> all modicum of decency they call him far worse things they are attempting to do far worse they have no right. none. [inaudible conversations] hi everybody.

i'm glad to see you. thank you. thank you so much for coming to tonight's program. so i am the founder of writers block now launching a 23rd year. if not yet on the e-mail list sign-up now looking back robert caro the last time he visited was 2002 it was unforgettable. with the johnson political machine with a powerbroker

extraordinaire and over the years has spoiled us to treat us to slight left turns those that are so rich in detail they could form the basis of future studies in and of themselves. so consider the new book working as a companion piece and today in 2019 is more resonant than ever for power used for good and against the greater good. it raises more giving a deep background into why he does what he does for its physical and intellectual evidence and not cranking out the next

volume for the reasons he goes through every sheet of paper to get to the truth that essence of political power. it is conan who possesses media power. is one of the funniest guys in the planet and therefore a devo tape. no matter what he offers they send regrets who are here is a guy who calls them out our soharry potter. [laughter] and they bring this to authors and they say no. and then to reiterated the

sadness that carol is the one who got away until tonight. [applause] so here is what will happen feel free to ask very brief question questions. one sentence. microphones are in the aisle and then sign and another book of his then you have to have another copy. it doesn't come often to book signings austin there was writers block don't wait another 17 years.

you want to get pictures together but put yourself in the way to enjoy the program so stand up and take pictures for 30 seconds and then you put your phone away. [applause] it is such a great pleasure to introduce bob caro and conan o'brien. [applause] >> this is an absolute thrill.

this is no secret that i have pursued you. you have been my white whale to my ahab and tonight i have cornered you and there is no getting away. this is the thrill of a lifetime thank you for sitting down with me. thank you. really. [applause] >> it doesn't take any quartering as you started to read my books in college instead of going to fort lauderdale to get hammered which is what i did. [laughter] >> i skipped spring break and my roommate and i read the path to power than backstage you said you idiot. i went to spring break. [laughter]

also thank you for the book that will fit on my night table. there so much to think about i will start with one demand i am the moderator and i will make a strict and simple demand, i will allow any question after i am - - after i am done interviewing except one. nobody is allowed to ask this man when is the next lyndon johnson book coming out. i forbid it people constantly bother this man when it will come out and i find it rude and i talked to a friend of mine he said you will be speaking and use the phrase that means it would have been

enough that those who borrow when will the next book come out the answer is that he just rich in the powerbroker it would have been enough. [applause] had he just ran past the power or any single one of these we would get the next book when he's damn well ready to give it to us. >> i will just talk i will not let you talk at all ff i finally got you now i will not let you speak. i love the book working and i will tell you why i have read all of your work i knew that

you were thorough as a researcher and a writer but i had no idea until i read this book so many words dedicated, compulsive, committed and i phrase you were taught very early allen hathaway a newsday when you are doing research, turned every page. you took it literally and i think further than any biographer in the history of the written word. >> i was a young reporter at newsday.ll short stories and then i was thrown as an investigator i had to go through a bunch of tfiles at the federal agency then they came back and wrote a memo for those who would

write a story the next day we had a managing editor from the 19 twenties he had a big head he started to drink very early in the day. we never knew if he graduated even went tont college but he had a prejudice against people from prestigious universities. and they hired me while he was on vacation as a joke on him. [laughter] he would walk by my desk every day and he never talked to me i would say good morning. he would never even answer. one day i have to go down nobody could be reached and i wrote a long memo.

the next morning the secretary said allen wants to see right away. and i said now i'm about to be fired all the way in i was sure i would be fired. the secretary said go in. he had a glass-enclosed office i could see a big red head bent over reading somethingng intently. it was myy memo he was reading and he waved me to a chair and said i didn't know somebody from princeton could do files like this from now on you do investigative work. i have great savoie fair and i said but i don't know anything about investigative work.

he looked up at me what i remember for a very long time and said just remember one thin thing, turned every page and never assume anything in turn every god damn page. i cannot tell you how me times in my life that has stuck with me and me resulting in finding something. >>host: so many times you say in the book maybe one document away from a great discovery in these massive rooms this side filled with documents you don't thank you will find anything but it's the next box t this is a waste of time but you do it anyway that's we find the document that blows everythingoc apart. >> so what i was doing lyndon

johnson coming to congress at the age of 29 you cannot go through every page. i said i really want to paint a picture of the young congressman's life was like so i said i will do every page so very innocuous to sam wasting another month of my life. all of a sudden there was a change and a certain point october 1940 before that the junior congressman then senior congressman committee chairman. after election day now all the sudden the committee chairman

and said can i have five minutes of your time cracks i don't think anyone here is old enough to remember but i said what happened october 1940 cracks he said money, kid. money. but you will never write about that. why not? because lyndon never put anything in writing that i go to thesese things with this innocuous letter then all of a sudden with that telegraph from october 1940 from george brown and he is getting them increasingly bigger federal

contract and to say that checks are on the way he replies at the bottom and writing i am not mentioning or responding to these people that because the names were there i could cross-reference to the letters to find out who they were. so now you say i'll keep going. then the most remarkable .document i ever came across was a list typed, six pages long and johnson's assistance told me they had typed it but this is what it was to typed

columns the left hand was the name of the congressman in the center was how much money he wants and what he needs it for. the amounts are so small. like $450 last minute advertising. [laughter] >> but in the left-hand column in his own handwriting he wrote if he would give them the full amount then he would write okay if it was partial he writes okay and amount like 300 or 500. for some of them he wrote none

or none out. i asked what does that mean and connolly said that guy would never get any money from lyndon johnson. he never forgot it he never forgave. so somehow congress became aware that if you wanted money from texas you have to go to this junior congressman now he was on a road to national powerow. >>host: what's fascinating to me is there is a connection there to turn it over even if you have toe go through fights thousand boxes just in case so you need to have a sense of place writing about these

people so you decide when you are writing about lyndon johnson you could not write about him and that she lived in the hill country. and we need to give a shout out to your incredible wife who is here tonight. [applause] there she is. stand up. you said we have to move to the hill country in texas and lived there for possibly a year or two for me to really write about lyndon johnson and she gave a very different answer from what my wife would say and she said let's go and that is incredible. >> that's not what she said. [laughter] she said why can't you ride a

biography about napoleon? [laughter] >> but she moved to the hill country and it worked but people were reticent but once you were living there you could understand the people and they grew to accept you and people started to talk about lyndon johnson who would not have spoken to youbo before. >> i knew i wasn't the best interviewer but i always thought i was good but the people i could not get to talk to me were the people of the hill country it started then at the western edge and goes on for 300 miles there were hardly any people they are. to say you drive 47 miles out

and watch for the cattle guard and then you go 30 miles and at the end is a house then you suddenly realize i haven't passed the house in 30 miles. they were so lonely it was such a perceptive remark that they believe it was wrong to say anything derogatory. >> even if they really didn't like him to say it is unpatrioticc and you don't say bad things about presidents. >> there is a striking moment trying to explain it is so

pivotal that his father had a ranch and it failed and the family became a laughing stock and they made you neil dan to put your hands in the soil and then you realize it's only soil for an inch or two then it was rock. >> it looked so beautiful when you come to the ranch it's covered in grass but there was so little soil on top if you did anything the grass washed away without his father was a wonderful legislator but his

favorite cousin really didn't like it. so she took me out and said get out of the car now kneel down and stick your fingers in and because lyndon johnson's father did not realize that it made the mistake they were ruined. >> he was humiliated so then there was a change is in lyndon johnson that there is a bitterness between father and son any other biographer would say i'm reading these articles but you really wanted to understand it so you went to his brother sam and you wanted

sam to get you back to that moment to understand what it was like he was sitting with his father during the disillusionment. so something and acting teacher might do it's very unusual you took sam to the actual house and sit at the actual table. and then to sit behind it and prodded him over and over in the intense way to remember what it was like and then he started talking. >> when i started one of the first people was lyndon's

little brother and to have that reputation full of bravado. and most of this stuff when you check them out they are not true. so any interim so then i walk around johnson city. and trying to get to know the people.

but then that secret of johnson and that had to do with that relationship. and then he idolized until 12 or 13 those were the happiest days of my life. 's father was a legislature loan - - legislator. that was being with my father on the campaign trail so then he loses the johnson ranch and then they live in the house that they are literally afraid the bank will take away. his mother was sick neighbors had to come and dohb dishes and those changed to a real hatred

from love. so that might get them and then national park service to say i could takeke them into the johnson boyhood home and then decide to take them so it is when he was a boy that is possible i asked him to set at his place in the table. and then to say tell me again

that the father had. and some were just shouting a conversation so i felt he was back in his boyhood. and now to say tell me again all of those wonderful stories of women growing up that you told me before. and then a few more details and then there was a long pies and then set i can't. why not? because it never happened and then without another word just

start to talk about him growing up and this time when i wentnt back and they said yes that is what happened and this was the typical horatio alger rags to riches is through the process and to take a lot of time of a completely different picture of johnson even down to noticing but you figured out pages were missing and the same pages were missing from all of the yearbooks lyndon johnson had them removed. who does that? [laughter] it took you a long time to

figure thatwh out but people really didn't likepe him. >> he had the nickname bull johnson. but then coming across why are you bothering me with these questions it is all there in black and white and i said where? and had a copy with the pages still in their and then they say what sort of an individual? and then to have the ease cut out.

>> not when he was president but at 21 he knew he had to get rid of thoseth pages. >> it was amazing. >> choosing to men to devote your life and they go to great extreme to hide their past as they were living it almost as if they knew you would be coming for them one day. [laughter] icult people towrite about .

>> not deliberately. >> there might be some connection there. you may have had some sense. there is a line in the book, "working", that really struck me. you say you look at your work. i think a lot of people think of history as dry in your life's work has been, you don't believe it should be dry. you think it should be alive. it's very important to you. and one of the things you think about the you wrote in this book, "working", a question you ask yourself a lot is there desperation on this page? is there desperation on this page? that is something you ask yourself every time you write a page. >> yes. you read this very carefully. i always felt, and it's something i always did feel.

if a work of fiction or biography is going to be successful, it's going to have the same qualities as a novel has. it's got to have rhythm, a sense of place and that sort of thing. what you are talking about is lyndon johnson, it's his last chance and he's running for senate in 1940. if he loses, his political career will be over. he's decided to leave politics. and he gets a kidney stone and he's behind the polling when he starts and he has to stay in the hospital for i think, it's a month. when he comes out, he so far behind that he can't think of a way of getting ahead. he thinks of this tactic. helicopters were brand-new things in 1940. he says if i campaign around to the small towns in the helicopter, people will come out.

and it was but they all called it the machine that stands still in the sky. i spoke to his - - you only find out these things. he says i will talk to them and they will probably have nothing to say to me. but you never know. the thing was, he was so excited. he would lean out as the helicopter going across texas and with the sides of it as if it was a horse. [laughter] i said you know, 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 this lamp on my desperate is there desperation on this page, i try to do it in

rhythm. i asked don't think i succeeded very well but, i try. >> no, you succeeded. [laughter] you are fearless as an interviewer. i was trying to sometimes - - what if i was robert caro, could i do this? so many times i thought, i could not do this. one of the things i found you talk about in "working", issue uncovered that lyndon johnson had a mistress named alice glass. you uncovered that. you have proof and shortly after you found that out, you get a call from the office of lady bird johnson. she said she'd like to speak to you. and that she'd like to talk to you. and you know that she knows that you know. and you went to the interview and you said - - you were never

interested in his sex life but now there was something relevant to his career. and you thought can i go sit with the first lady if she knew what i knew? it's terrifying to think about. what was that like? >> can i just say? >> you can do whatever you want to do.[laughter] >> i wasn't going to write about all of lyndon johnson's affairs. because all if not most of them were one night stands and most didn't have significance. what happened, can't remember if it's in this book are not. i'm reading all of the letters. johnson was in australia during the second world war. you are allowed one call back to the united states. and i knew that franklin roosevelt were taken johnson as a protcgc said to him if you

need any advice you can call the white house. and all of a sudden as i'm going through this, there's this telegram and the telegram says, lyndon, everybody else turned out at the white house. everybody else thinks you should run for the senate. i think you should run again for the house. the last line was hope we can have that birthday party. alice. i had no idea who alice was. nobody really knew this name. and shortly after you say, it's just sheer luck that happened to me. when you sit in the johnson library, the archivist desk. and if there's a call, it has to go through her. the phone rings and she says, it's for you.

the hostess and reception desk in the lobby says there are two women here who would like to speak to you. would you come speak to them. i said sure. they said to me, we read the powerbroker, so we know you'll find out about alice. [laughter] and we want to tell you about her because alice wasn't another bimbo. she was really important in lyndon's life. so to find out about her, she came from a little town in texas. she was a great hostess in washington. she had a grand salon. she came from this little town in the middle of nowhere. i never knew i would go to moreland and talk to her friends that she grew up with. trying to get a picture of her. and i have to say, i hope there's no one here from

portland, texas. no one would ever go to moreland except for any other reason. and i got a friend - - a call from a mutual friend who said, bird - - everyone called lady bird, bird in texas. bird knows you know about alice. i was interviewing - - in her office. all of a sudden, her secretary was standing at my desk saying, this saturday, she'd like you to come to the ranch and to the interview there. so we sat down and i'm talking too long here. she sat at the head of the table. i sat at her right hand with my stenographers notebook that i take notes in.

without a word of preamble, she starts to talk about alice glass and she talks about how beautiful she was and how elegant she was. i remember she said, i remember alice in a series of the most beautiful dresses. and me and dresses, well, not that beautiful. she said whatever alice taught lyndon, he followed for the rest of his life. when she met him he was a 29-year-old congressman and had long gangly arms. she said turn them to your advantage with very nice cufflinks. but she also said, at various times in his life, she saved his political career. one was particularly dramatic to me because, herman brown who was this very fierce, very bad tempered ruler of - - they

suddenly came to a real collision point. not long after johnson came to congress. johnson was getting them contracts but at the same time, he wanted to build a low income housing project in austin. the low income, it was mostly mexican-americans. this poor neighborhood. he owned most of the houses and was getting a good income from it and he was enraged by this. his chief, lobbyist said to me, herman was about to turn on lyndon. and when herman turned on you, he never turned back. >> and johnson really needed herman. he couldn't afford this collision. >> no, they were providing the money to give to other congressmen and to finance his

own career. and alice said, just have them down to my estate. she sat them down at the table and she said there's an easy compromise. give herman the dam and have lyndon, the land. there were various times when he went to her for advice. it wasn't a one night stand. it was sort of a 20-25 year - - the sexual part and it is in 2-3 years but even when he was vice president, years later. he would drive down to her estate in virginia to spend the day with her. >> so you're in a room with lady bird johnson and it just goes unsaid. that it was a sexual relationship. even though she would undoubtedly have known that it was. >> i didn't quite catch that

question. >> it was pretty dirty. [laughter] i'm embarrassed to now. - - i'm embarrassed now. i'm trying to think of another journalist or biographer who sat with the former first lady and discussed - - it's really a captivating moment that doesn't happen much. i don't think that happens. >> i have to say, it's the only interview i ever had where i couldn't bear to look at the person i was interviewing even one spin she talked and i kept taking notes. i couldn't look at her. >> you talk a lot about your process. we've talked about your need to hold the documents. turn every page. go to the actual place whether it's the whole country or capitol hill.

an experience with those people experience so you can really feel it. another part of your process is you write everything out longhand and you really sit with it for a while before you go to the typewriter. use an electric typewriter, is that right? i feel like a prosecutor now. to use or use an electric typewriter? what is it about that process. why does that help you to write it out longhand first and why did you never graduate to what everyone else is using which is a computer? >> that's a really good question. it's because i'm too fast. i've always been too fast. when i was at princeton, the incident that was formative in this is i was in the creative writing course and was taught by a southern gentleman so i

took this course for two years. every two weeks you handed in a short story. i thought i was fooling him because of was always doing the short stories. always very easy for me to write fast. so i'd write some the night before. we used to call it pulling all nighters. i thought i was fooling him about how much work went into it. and then in our very last session, he handed back my short story and he said something complimentary about it which he usually did. and then he said, but you know mr. caro, you will never achieve what you want to achieve, she stop thinking with your fingers. some times in your life, you realize someone has seen right through you. he knew i never put any effort into it. that it was too easy for me to

write. then i went to newsday and i was really a faster rewrite man. but when i was - - to do the powerbroker and i started to realize how complex this was. i'm a member thinking, have to make myself not only think about things but think about them all the way through which was really hard for me. so i decided to slow myself down. that's why i write my first drafts in longhand. >> and then you type into revisions and look things up on the board. you are sloping you are a craftsman. you are methodical about it. >> you are very complementary. you called me a craftsman, in other words calling me very slow. [laughter] >> one thing i was curious about is your standard for

biography is so high. you will spend years working on one phase of the book. it occurred to me, it must be difficult for you to read other people's biographies. because you must all the time be hearing about a great biography and you read it and you realize, this person could have gone further. this person didn't put in as much work. can you sit down and enjoy someone else's biography reducing, you blew it! and throw it across the room? >> there i have to say, i don't have that feeling about other biographies. there are terrific biographies out there. >> okay, that was no fun. [laughter] >> maybe i'm out of my league

here. >> no, that's me. there are so many times in the book, "working", this struck me. how important you feel that imagination is for a biographer. and at first i would think, well, no. a biographer doesn't need imagination. you get the documents and you talk with the people and you do the legwork and then you construct the narrative.so imagination doesn't really come into it. but it was clear when i read "working" that you have really employed imagination. he spent a lot of time when you find out about a moment, say in moses life. where he was trying to imagine what he could do with the west side of manhattan when it was just mud. and a 30 train coming through

and you describe, you needed to feel what it was like when moses and his white suit would go up there and look at that spot. you re-created in a novelistic way. but it's why with the and it's compelling. imagination to you is so key. >> well, imagination is key but it's a biography. unless you have the facts. the reason i was able to talk about how moses and vision the whole west side highway. that great public works project is because i read one day, francis kirkland was later roosevelt's secretary of labor. when she was a young woman, she and robert moses used to walk around new york.

one day she wrote in her oral history, one day they're going to a picnic in new jersey. so the ferryboat - - at that time, the new york central railroad trains were taking pigs to the slaughterhouses. there was this coal burning and constant smog hung over the whole western shoreline of manhattan. the smell was bad and the city couldn't get near its waterfront. and all of a sudden she heard - - she wrote in her oral history. she heard robert moses thing francis, couldn't this waterfront be the most beautiful thing in the world. we have this great highway running along the water. i will have to tear down some buildings at 72nd street but we

will have a marina over here. a baseball field should be there. as i'm reading i said, that's exactly how he built it, 25 years later. then you could put things together because people told me how many afternoons he would come back to work until the taxi to put them over to riverside drive. he's a lower-level municipal staffer. and he is envisioning something that's the largest pop public work ever done in america. when you have that fact or those groups of facts. then you could say, this is

what he was thinking. , otherwise i couldn't have done that.>> you need the bricks of fact and this order of imagination but you're putting yourself there. >> that's a great way of putting it. you need the facts first - - bricks first. >> i'm a great writer. [laughter] i've never felt so stupid in my life. you talk about something that's very personal in this book. you say you did not grow up in a house of books. and that was not part of something that was important to your dad. your mother became ill when you are quite young. and she had a dying wish that change the trajectory of your life.

>> yeah. well my mother got very sick when i was five. those days, if you had breast cancer and it came back, there was very little they could do for you. so she died when i was 11. but my father, he came over here from poland and taught himself to write. but he, his language with his friends - - before he died my mother made him promise to send me to the - - harvest man's school. it became the center of my boyhood.

>> and it was that horace mann that you got your taste of journalism. >> to this day - - and i have dinner with 2-3 guys who worked with me 60 years ago. so the first remarkable thing is we are all still alive so if we get up from this table and we haven't set a date for the next meeting. someone said, joe you didn't set a date. this is what's keeping us alive. >> whatever works. you said you have snagged every prestigious prize one can get in your field. you think the biggest honor is the one that horace mann has given you.

>> no one's ever asked me. >> someone at npr was like - - [laughter] wind it out and then send in the next hippie. this is a big deal. >> so some years ago, told us that they'd like to name a prize after me. i said that would really be great if there was something that i believed in. they said what do you want? i think i said earlier in this interview that i feel it's very important and not sufficiently understood that if you want to history or biography to end the war, the level of the right thing has to be the same level

as the novel. i believe that. try reading his sentences, he such a great writer. so they named the prize the harvest man prize for literary excellence in the writing of history. and that's the biggest thrill. to go up there. now they see each year, the number of submissions, you have to do an independent essay. increases. this one teacher, barry weinstock. he said the faculty is talking. that makes me feel totally

great. >> i would think so. also to come full circle like that. to have been that horace mann and then come back now and they're in your name, these kids are getting this prize. >> sometimes i win an award or something and - - says to me, why aren't you excited? it's like it happens to somebody else. but this is me. >> it occurred to me reading about these men you write about that you have devoted your life to. they have something in common with you. and there's a line that people used to say about lyndon johnson. that they never saw anybody

work that hard. and it occurred to me, your book is called "working". your work ethic you're honestly born with these incredible talents but your work ethic to be at this and to be in the harness for years at a time. bears some similarity to these people you write about. do you think that's fair to say? >> is that a compliment? [laughter] >> it is. but i believe that's something, one of the things i find inspiring about you and this book. as we live in the era of attention deficit disorder and apps and everyone's on their phones and no one can pay attention. and you and your wife took of our poverty practically, to work on the moses book and disappeared for 7-9 years with

no real, you know, evidence that this would be a big success. that is counter to the entire culture we are in today. this devotion to work in this devotion to doing your work and doing it well. i found that to be - - there are elements. i know you found unfavorable things about these people you've written about. but there's also amazing qualities about them. like you, both of them were incredibly hard working people in that much resonate with you. >> the quality they share. in many ways lyndon johnson and robert moses are opposite. there are unbelievable amounts of work. i tried - - you do lots of

things as a writer to try to remind yourself. my publisher is really wonderful. he never asked me, when are you going to deliver? i have never been asked. so it takes me so many years that it's easy to fall yourself that you are working hard. because no one is checking up on you. so i do everything i can to remind myself that it's a job. people make fun of me because i wear a tie and a jacket to work. it's because when i was young, people for ties and jackets to work. i write down every day how many words i wrote. just to remind yourself, it's a job. you have to produce. >> you look at the cover of this book and i think a lot of you have it. it you posing in your office where you work and i was

thinking, you don't really have a boss and are in this room and you're working. you have this very strong work ethic what time are you writing by in the morning? >> that's where it varies. you like to say you get up at 730 or whatever. but the truth is - - i'm telling you all the stuff i don't usually talk about. [laughter] you get worked up. as the chapter goes. - - said do you know what time it is. i member, i said, don't tell me. i don't want to know. >> what's interesting is, hemingway's technique. he would say i would stop before the well was dry in the evening so that i knew i could have a beginning in the morning. he would exhaust the field thank in one writing session.

do you think about things like that? >> yes. you're the first person that's ever mentioned that. [laughter] >> why am i in comedy? i have no idea. wasting my life. i could be doing real - - here and i'm not doing it. >> you ask terrific questions. i wrote my senior thesis at princeton on hemingway. one of the things he said was, i always stop when i know what the next sentence is going to be so i can start the next day. i do try to do that also. i think this the best piece of advice i've ever gone. >> just stop a little shy of what you have for that day. my other question is the human question. you're in that office and it's 3:00 in the afternoon. you know you're supposed to do more words. do everything, i'm up here near

the west side i can pop out and see a movie? do you ever do that? do you ever just sneak out and see a movie? rina doesn't have to know about it. >> never in my entire life. >> you're missing out. i want to come by your office one day. knock on the door with prepaid tickets and go to the movies. would you go with me? >> if i don't answer, it's because i'm so deep in the work. >> that's what they all say to me. that's what every girl said to me when i asked her out. if i don't answer, i'm deep in the work. i'm going to open it up to questions now from the audience. and we will take it from there.

how long overdue for questions you think? 15 minutes? [inaudible] we will figure it out. [inaudible] yeah. >> thanks so much for flying down here. i'm a huge fan. i read the new york times piece and i finally found a kindred spirit. i'm wondering how you ended up writing or working on this new york times piece and finally, how did you end up getting the - - >> you're asking the wrong guy a question here. i didn't write that he's been a very good writer who's here

tonight. john. he heard about this rumor that i was obsessed with mr. caro in an unhealthy way. and he wrote that story. and then we ended up making this happen. i tilted this man. i used the new york times to guild them into talking to me. >> besides from work ethic, is there anything in the life of moses or johnson that you found inspirational or have applied in your own life? either what to do or how to be or what not to do or how not to be. is there anything you feel like you've learned from the personality of moses or johnson that you've applied in your own life? >> that's such a good question. let me just think a second.

with both of them, i guess i didn't ever put in these terms before. you feel the most important thing is to keep working at something. like i just did moses envision the west side highway whatever year that was. i think it was 1912. he didn't get the bill until 1937. you've been trying for 25 years. johnson, the book i'm writing right now. you say he's passing all of this social welfare legislation. the civil rights act. headstart. you say, he's working all the

time to change the votes in the senate to get these things through. very impressive to me. how hard these two men worked and never stopped. yes sir. >> mr. caro, i remember reading - - and it seemed as though the next book would cover the next presidency. at one point did you realize the presidency of johnson had to be divided into two books. >> he was wondering at what point did you decide that johnson's presidency would require more than just one book? >> oh, yes.

he thought his youth for example, the time i started, i think they were seven johnson biographies and they all told a chapter or two on his youth. none of them seem to have enough color and detail for me. but then i realized there was this incredible story. those of you that have read the book, those of you that haven't. [indiscernible] [laughter] they were telling you the stories about johnson, really as a ruthless - - even as a young man. but then they would no matter what linden was like, we loved him. it took a while for it to sink in that they were talking about electricity. what did electricity mean.

turning on a light switch. you thought this is incredible. that he's managed to transform the lives of these people by doing something impossible. there's no dam to create the hydroelectric power. then somebody will have to lay, not thousands, but tens of thousands of lines to these isolated farmhouses. as soon as they do, women didn't have to do everything by hand. the water and all. i remember i also told - - i said it's very hard. i said i want to show what government can do for people. i think we've forgotten that. the great power of social security. was it like to be old in

america. when you lost your job and you had no money coming in. then there is social security. i'm working right now on a section that you could call what it was like to be old and sick in america until medicare. i said it's hard to show that if you're talking about a city project. social programs and other immigrants, etc. but here we have a - - the 10th congressional district in the middle of these isolated hill country, cut off from everything. your thing that changes is they get a new congressman. if i can examine what he did for these people, i can show the effects of how government can help people. i constantly come across - - i never thought of this, i want to do this.

so that's what makes my book longer. >> at the end of the most recent volume, passage of power, you start writing about vietnam and a lot of people have speculated that had president kennedy lived, he probably wouldn't have gotten the domestic legislation that johnson got but maybe we wouldn't have gotten hired in vietnam. what do you think of that speculation? >> i think, his legislation was not going anywhere. in many ways, kennedy was a great president and that he lifted our ideals up and he could enunciate the best of america. but the fact is, on the day he was assassinated, his civil rights bill was never going to

get - - so johnson, a legislative genius picked that up. as far as vietnam, i'm going to take a pass on that question because i haven't written it yet or even really thought it completely through yet. so certainly the vietnam thing as it turned out is a horrible story. would it have turned out the same way? i don't think i'm ready to answer you yet. >> would you share with us what first lead you to select robert moses and lyndon johnson as the subject of your life's work? >> sure. could you all hear that question. an incident in my youth. i was a reporter on newsday and i got interested in politics. so i was doing investigative

work. so i won minor journalistic awards. when you're very young and you win anything, you think you know everything. so i thought i understood how political power worked. robert moses wanted to build a bridge. a bridge between - - and oyster bay. so newsday assigned me to look into it. i found out it was a terrible idea and would have generated so much traffic that the long island expressway would have needed 12 extra lanes to handle the traffic to come down from new england. it appears it would have caused pollution in the long island

sound. i spoke to rockefeller and his counsel in the speaker of the assembly. everyone understood this was the world's worst idea. i wrote a story that said the bridge was dead. i had a friend in albany then and about two weeks later, he calls me and says you know bob, i think you better come back up here. i said i don't think i have to bother. i think i took care of that bridge. but robert moses was appear yesterday. so i drove back up and it was one of the revelations of my life. i spoke to the same people. they all thought it was the worlds greatest idea. the state was financing the preliminary work. i said, you think you know about everything i've been writing, it sort of baloney. you think you live in a

democracy and power comes from being elected. here's a guy who was never elected to anything. but he has more power than anyone who was elected. more power than any mayor or governor put together. and he's held this power for 44 years. with that he shaped this whole metropolitan area and you who is supposed to know about political power, you have no idea how he got this power and neither does anybody else. so that was the moment. when i started thinking about that and i didn't really have time to think about it as a book. because as a reporter, you are running every day to do another story. you don't get a chance to think. but then i became what was known as a nieman fellow at harvard university which means you go to harvard for a year

while you study. that was the first i remember, that european - - mother was sick and she had to take care of so i was alone a lot of the time. the nieman foundation used to have a lot of social events and i don't like to go by myself. so i spent a lot of time in this little office that harvard gave me and i came up with the idea of the powerbroker. when i finished doing robert moses. i really thought that was a book not about him but about power and cities. i wanted to do national power and that's why i did lyndon johnson. >> you mentioned at the end of working in the interview that you once met or saw lyndon johnson. i was curious the circumstances behind that. >> he was asking about the one time in your life that you actually saw in the flesh, lyndon johnson. >> the one time i saw him - - i never talked to him or

anything. i was a substitute political reporter when he ran against goldwater. and he came along the press line where i was with the line of reporters. i think we actually shook hands. but that was only, ever saw him in the flesh. >> hi. this is more than an honor. more of a fan boy question. in the first couple of johnson books, it was hard to get the people closest to him to talk. when the book came out, you got, but nobody more than jack valente. then he did a real about-face and praised you to high heaven, rightfully. did that make it easier for you to get interviews from the people closer to johnson, subsequently? >> he was asking, after the early books came out, you took

a lot of heat from johnson's friends, especially jack valente. and then he said that valente turned around and started to really praise you. i think your question was, did that mean a lot to you? >> it's not just valente. a lot of the johnson people who attacked me and wouldn't talk to me at the beginning, they almost all came around. and really, they are very helpful. i was in austin last night. [inaudible] [laughter] >> guards, remove this man. [laughter] >> i just want to jump in

quickly. i always heard that 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. at a wonderful dinner the johnson library had last night. the president of the foundation sort of said that they regretted the hostility towards me. >> that's amazing. [applause] >> is there any chance a new edition of powerbroker would be published that restores the 300,000 words that your publisher forced you to cut? >> you live and hope. [laughter] my publisher would like to publish. i would like to publish all of

those words. but it's not so easy to do that. you just don't put it back into the book. so it's a lot of work but i hope to do that, yes. >> if you had worked on a word processor or computer, you could hit one button and it all restores immediately. do with that what you will. yes? >> will you please comment on operation texas and johnson's reverence for judaism. there's something called operation texas. are you familiar with that? okay, that's okay. >> i'm a retired history teacher. i only read history. i read all the johnson books twice and i think i speak for

all the people here that think, you're the finest biographer i have ever read. a - - [applause] >> i hope you heard that. good. >> my question is this, johnson had a number of important mentors along the way. men and women. alice, franklin roosevelt, sam rayburn. is there one you might point to that you thought was most pivotal. >> it was the most pivotal or important of all his mentors. >> those three that you mentioned. i called them the 3rs. they were all equally, russell and rayburn shared two

characteristics. they were incredibly lonely men. johnson made himself a people called a professional son to them. he's inviting them 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 and they were instrumental in raising him to power. roosevelt was different. roosevelt never made protcgcs of young congressmen. he just had a role. he didn't help. i started to realize there was one exception to this. it was lyndon johnson. johnson would have breakfast with him. i said to a man named james rowe who was a friend of

johnson. i said what made this different for franklin roosevelt he said, roosevelt was a political genius. almost no one understood what he was talking about. lyndon johnson understood at all from the first minute and roosevelt saw that. it was just two geniuses. and roosevelt once said to dickies, he said if i had gone to west texas, i might have turned out like that too. yes sir. >> when you're doing interviews, people are aware they're talking about history and they care how they look. how do you decide what to believe? >> i never believe anything that shows told to me in an interview once.

you interview people over and over again. i think i had 22 interviews. several hundred pages of typed notes. then you go to other people involved in the story. and you ask them the same questions. then you go back to the same person you said so and so, how do you reconcile that? it's very laborious. and then of course, for so much of johnson. you have written notes. he never allowed minutes to be taken at meetings but somebody had to take notes on them. one way or another - - people

are not trying to mislead you. they're just told so many times, they think it's true. but often it's not. [laughter] >> who were the most important influencers as far as biographers as far as your - - >> it's given. i member i was captivated. his sentences - - what makes history and door? you know? to me, it has to be written really well. and there are a lot of historians. but he stands alone. >> thank you for being here and for your work.

i'm a journalist with aspirations of writing nonfiction books like yourself. i'm wondering if you can speak to your relationship to - - especially at the beginning of your career. you have to sell your house for instance to cover your living expenses. i'm wondering if - - was present for you or if that's a chip that's missing. >> it's a really good question and one that i was interested in bringing up. she's asking basically, you had to, you sold your home to pay for the powerbroker. at one point, your back goes out and you're telling - - i need to go. you have no money. she's getting the records and you're telling her take a left, take a right. the question is, how did you

deal with doubt. you're lying there and you have no money. you're writing a book that you're not sure how long it will take. i believe your wife had to go to work and support you. doubt. how do you fight that doubt that a lot of us would have. oh my god, what have i done? >> i didn't fight it very successfully. it was a big part of my life for a long time. the first editor i had was not - - i used a i started the powerbroker for the world. the advance was $5000 but you got $2500 in advance. so i was a reporter and i was basically didn't have any say.

i got a grant that got me through one year. i thought i would be done in nine months. i told - - we would finally get to go to france. then we were really out of money and i came home one day and - - said we sold the house. unfortunately it was before the real estate boom so we bought it for $45,000 and we sold it for $70,000. that got us to one year. i just remember at times being broke. i finally wrote half 1 million words. i gave it to my editor who took a long time to read and return

my telephone calls. then he took me to a very inexpensive chinese restaurant on broadway. and i remember he said, we like the book. i said basically, can i have the other $2500. he said to me, no bob, i guess you didn't understand me. we want you to continue with it but nobody's going to read a book on robert moses and you have to be prepared for very small printing and we are not prepared to go beyond the terms of the contract. which even i got. so that was a very bad period. i didn't know where to turn.

i had run out of places to get money. luckily, very luckily, the editor left to this publishing house so i could leave. i didn't have an agent. i knew now i had better get one. i'm a member 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. why are you - - what are you so worried about? 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? i don't remember the amount but

it was enough to live on for two years. she looked at me and she said is that what you're worried about because this other editor many feel no one cared about this book. she said is that what you're worried about? you can stop worrying right now. i can get this for you by picking up this telephone. everybody in new york knows about this book. so financially my life turned around then. [applause] ...

do you have a feeling of this too shall pass an we can get on with the next one? >> i don't know -- i think it's too early to tell you. we don't really know if it's an operation. >> we had a discussion wondering if he was an outlier, crazy set of, i'm not going to say skills but characteristics that allow him to thread the needle in this moment at this particular time and once he pass, that's it or a sign of things to come. what do you think? >> yeah, crazy roman emperors. i don't know the answer to that. i don't think we know the answer to that yet. >> hi, thank you both for your

passion and your scholarship. i'd like to know what advice you'd give to a room full of writers in an age where perhaps people's attention spans are wondering, maybe in not in this room but in the rest of life. what advice would you give to new writers? >> in this age of wandering attention spans, what advice would you give to writers now when things can seem a little dire for the process that you've dedicated your life to? >> i don't have any advice to other writers. i think everybody has to find their own way. i don't think that my way is necessarily the best way. it's just my way. i think it's a very tough time for writers but i happen to think the time is already

starting to turn back, books have leveled off. i feel people keep saying, attention spans are shorter and shorter. well, i will tell you the only field that i know anything about the presidential biography, so david's book on truman was about 1100 pages, that sold many more copies than other presidential biographies up till then. i think the proof is everywhere around us that not necessarily our attention spans are shorter. i think people want, terrific writers, i happened to think there's always a desire to find

out how things really happened and i don't think you find that out by very short time. [applause] [applause] >> rob will be signing books, we will see you soon.