>> hi everybody. i'm glad to see you, thank >> if you are not yet on the writers block sign-up we just added senators amy klobuchar. and now for tonight we are

delighted to welcome back robert caro the last time he we visited was 2002. it was unforgettable. the storiess of dead johnson political machine painted the picture of the powerbroker extraordinaire. like his subject he has no fear. he has spoiled us with a portrait to treat us to the narrative and the diversions of bystanders so rich in detail they might form the basis of future studies in and of themselves. his book as a companion piece to the moses book and today in 2019 more resonant than ever power used for good and against the greater good.

as he gives a deep background into the why he does what he does. why he take so long to crank out the next volume and with every sheet of paper with every file with that essence of political power and with political power the late-night comedy beats to its own drum and without question as one of the funniest guys on the planet. and an armchair presidential scholar and also a robert caro devotee a. he sent regrets and calls the johnson series our harry potter. [laughter]

and then they say no. and then to reiterate that he was the one who got away until tonight everybody. [applause]yb and then feel free to ask very brief questions microphones are in the aisle and afterwords will sign copies of working and another book of his. to get that book signed you have to have a copy of working. if you have not purchased working already, do it tonight. he doesn't come to l.a. often for book signings. the last time was 2002.

don't wait another 17 years. all of you want to get pictures of conan and bob together. put yourself on the way and enjoy thehe program. when i bring these guys out, stand up and take pictures for 30 seconds and then you put your phones away. [applause] it is a great pleasure. [cheers and applause]

this is an absolute thrill for me. it's no secret mr. caro that i pursued you. you are my white whale to my ahab and tonight i have cornered you and there is no getting away. this is a thrill of a lifetime. thank you for sitting down with me. [applause] >> it didn't take any cornering a wonderful story that you started to read my books in college instead of going to fort lauderdale to get hammered. [laughter] >> i skipped the spring break and we read and then backstage

said i went to spring break you idiot. [laughter] also finally mr. caro writing a book that will fit on my night table. there is so much to talk about. but i will start with one deman demand. i am the moderator and will make a strict and simple demand to allow any question except one. no one is allowed to ask this man when is that next lyndon johnson book coming out. i forbid that question. i forbid it. people are constantly bothering this man. when will the book come out and i find it rude. i talked to a friend of mine

and he said he will be speaking at a temple so you should use a phrase that means it would have been enough and i maintain that when people bother mr. caro my answer to them is had he just written the powerbroker it would have been enough. [applause] that any single one of these books we will get the book when he is damn well ready to give it to us. i would just talk. i will not let you talk at all. [laughter] i finally got you and i will not let you speak. this is amazing. i'm doing well. [laughter]

mr. caro, i love the book working i will tell you why i have read all of your work. i am aor huge fan and a new you are thorough as a researcher and writer but i had no idea until you wrote the book that i could use so many words dedicated, compulsive, committed and the phrase you were taught very early a man one of your first jobs told you when you are doing research, turn every page. you took it literally and i thank you have taken it farther than any biographer and history of the written word. >> i was a young reporter at newsday. still doing very short stories and then i was thrown into the

investigative going through a bunch of files at a federal agency. i came back and wrote down a memo and we had a managing editor f, a guy with a big head with some hair around the back it was very red because he started to drink very early in the day. we don't know if he graduated or even went to college but had prejudice against people from prestigious universities. and that was a joke on him. he would walk by my a desk every day and never talk to me and say good morning

mr. hathaway. he would never even answer me. everyone else was on a picnic they could not be reached with cell phones. so the next morning very early and they said allen wants to see you right away. hii was right not to move. i was sure i would be fired in the secretary said go in. and then over reading something very intently. and i saw it was my memo he was reading. after a while said i know someone from princeton could

do files like this. from now on you do investigativerk work so now i have the savoir-faire and that i don't know anything about investigative d work. what i remember is a long time to say just remember one thin thing, turn every page and never assume anything. turn every god damn page. i can't tell you how many times that stuck with me and resulted in me finding something. >> you say maybe you are a document away from a great discovery and rooms the side filled with documents and you think it's a waste of time that you do it anyway and that's where you find theng documents that blows everything apart.

>> so when i was doing lyndon johnson he comes to congress at the age of 29 and you can't go through every page in the johnson library but i really want to paint a picture what a young congressman's life was like in the first year's i will do every page and i go throughi' these things and thinking as we always think i'm wasting another month of my life. and all of a sudden i noticed there is a change at a certain point and the junior congressman writing to the senior congressman can i have

five minutes of your time? after that on election day all of a sudden those from committee chairman and said can i have five minutes of your time? and i think anyone here is old enough to remember but an old washingtonfi fixer i said what happened october 1940? he said money, kid. , money but you can never write about that because lyndon never put anything in writing. i'm going to these things with and thenuous letter the next document is the western telegraph from 1945

george brown which is the texas firm which finances johnson and getting increasingly bigger federal contracts and the telegram says the checks are on the way. lyndon replied himself on the bottom in writing, i'm not mentioning i'm not responding to thesere people so you think them but the six names were in the air so i could cross reference to their letters and find out who they were. so then you say i keep going and then i found another thing which to me was one of the most remarkable documents i ever came across, six pages long and john connolly the

secretary of treasury and they both toldly me that they typed up at this is what it was. there are two types of columns in the left-hand column there is one in in the second how much many he wants and what he needs it for and the amounts are so small by today's standards. like $450 for last-minute advertisingve. >> like today. but go ahead. [laughter] >> so he needs $600 but then in the left-hand column in his own handwriting he wrote he would give them the full amountpe of money he wrote okay

if he gives them part of the many he writes okay and then the amount like okay 300. for some of them he wrote none or he said none out. i asked connolly what does it mean when he ran - - wrote none out? he said that guy would never get any money from lyndon johnson. he never forgot and he never forgave. in this one month somehow congress became aware that if you wanted money from texas you had to go to the junior congressman now he was on the road to national power. >>cspan: what is fascinating to touch every document and turn it over and read everything even if you go through 5000 boxes you will go through all 5000 just in case.

the flipside is you need to have a sense of place with these powerful men so you decided unless you lived in the hill country and you live there. we need to give a shout out to your incredible wife who was here tonight. [applause] >> you said we need to move to the hill country in texas or possibly a year or two and she gave a very different answer from what my wife would say, let's go.

to be absolutely incredible. >> that's not what she said. [laughter] she said why can't you write a biography of napoleon? [laughter] >> you move to the hill country and it worked they were reticent but once you were living ther there, you could understand and they grew to accept to you and people started to talk about lyndon johnson who would not have spoken to you before. >> i tried. but the people i couldn't get are the people of the hill country.

and then to go on and there were hardly any people there. they would say you drive 47 miles and watch for the cattle guard and you might go 30 miles and at the end would be a house and then suddenly you realize i haven't passed the house in 30 miles they just weren't used to talking to people they believe it was wrong to say anything derogatoryyt. >> even if they really didn't like them to think you don't

say bad things about the president and times have changed. w [laughter] there is a striking moment when lyndon johnson's relatives explain it so pivotal that his father was his i and had a ranch and it failed and the family became a laughing stock you are trying to understand the failure the relative made you put your hand in the swale of that ranch and you realized it was only soil for an inch or two and then rock. >> it looks so beautiful there was so little soil on top of the rock as soon as you try to do anything w with it the grass

had been beaten down and washed away. i thought lyndon'sdidn father ws a wonderful legislator and a wonderful man his cousin really didn't like him. and said get out of the car. and said kneel down and stick your fingers into the ground and it looks so beautiful i could even get the length of myfu fingers. and because johnson's father did not realize this and made the one mistake, the family was ruined. >> he was humiliated so then there is a change in johnson with a bitterness between father and son. any other biographer would say i'm reading these articles but

you really wanted to understand it and you did something that blows my mind he went to lyndon johnson's brother sam and said to get you back to the moment and then to sit at the table and that's you sat behind him. and you prodded him over and over in an intense way to remember what it was like and suddenly he did and started talking. talk about those conversations.

>> and i say? >> whatever you want. [laughter] >> one of the first people i went to see was sam houston johnson, lyndon's little brother. he had a reputation to be a heavy drinker so most of the stuff he told you and they weren't true. so in the interim and then i heard he had cancer and stopped drinking. so just to walk around this little town and he was coming towards me and was a different

man and had a cane and was hobbling and i said that i knew by this time whatever the secret of the desperate ambition that idolized intel he was 12 or 13 years old that his father was a legislator the happiest days of my life was going with my father on the campaign trail. so he loses the johnson ranch and live in a house they are literally afraid the bank will take away. there is often no food because

mother was sick. neighbors had to bring cover dishes for charity. johnson change from idle and love to his father to real hatred. i wanted to get the picture of what it was like so we got the national park service so i thought of the idea that might get him to remember accurately and i goty. the national park service to go into the boyhood home after all the tourists. so this was about 6:00 o'clock and as you say i ask you to sit in his place at the table father was at one end and mother at the other end there

was a bench with the three sisters and so then in fact i did sit behind i didn't want anything distracting. i said tell me again about the arguments lyndon and his father had at dinner. it was very slow. and then white? suddenly he was going fast and then shouting the conversation you are a failure you will always be a failure. i felt he was back in his boyhood i said now tell me againno all of those wonderful stories about lyndon growing up that you told me before only give me a few more details. there was as long pause and

finally he said i can't. i said why not cracks he said because they never happened. then without another word, he just started to. tell me a very different story of johnson growing up and the path to power and this time going back to the otherwe people they said yes, that is what happened and gave me more details. >> the story on johnson before your book was the typical horatio alger rags to riches, popular and through the process you got a completely different picture c of johnson even down to noticing looking at his old yearbooks he figured out pages were missing and all from all the yearbooks because they were unfavorable and he had

them removed. who does that? [laughter][l it take you a long time to figure it out and then he found the pages that people really didn't like him in school. >> he had the nickname in college but when someone said why are you bothering me with these questions? it's all there in black and white. i said where? she said in the yearbook and i said i miss those pages and she had a copy with the pages when i turned to those they were gone and then you say what sort of an individual in my dealing with? twenty-one 2 years old and he

took the trouble to have them cut out of almost all of the copies? >> he knew at 21 he had to get rid of those pages. >> it was amazing. >> it's interesting i'm curious if it is a coincidence you have chosen to man moses and johnson to devote your life and they went to great extremes more than anybody would to hide their past as they were living in an almost as if they knew you would be coming for them one day. [laughter] >> but you did he didn't choose two guys leaving notes and memos but they went to great extremes to not write

anything down. one at the age of 21 is cutting out unfavorable pictures fromm his yearbook you chose incredibly difficult people to write about. [laughter] >> there may be a connection. there is a line in the book that struck me you said you look at your work and people think of history as drive of your life's work is you think it should be alive. that's very important to you and what you think about is their desperation on this page? that is something you ask yourself every time you write a page. >> you read this very

carefullys . >> i apologize. [laughter] but i always felt that if the bic on - - a book of nonfiction is successful has to have the same qualities as a novel a sense of place, what you are talking about is lyndon johnson's last chance running for senate in 1948 if he loses the political career is over. he gets a kidney stone and is behind his opponent and has to stay in the hospital for a month when he comes out he is so far behind he can't think of a way so he thinks of a tactic helicopters were

brand-new then and if i can fly around to all of these small towns in a helicopter people will come out and they did the machine that stands still in the sky. you only find out these things you have three helicopter pilots and i will talk to them they will probably have nothing to say to me but you never know. they all told me that he was so excited he would lean out as a helicopter would go across and hit the sides like it was a horse. [laughter] and i said you have a picture?

this is his last chance so i put a note on my a desk if there is a desperation on this page i don't think i succeeded very well but i tried. >> you succeeded. you are fearless as an interviewer. sometimes i try to think could i do this and i think know i could not do this. one of the things i found you talk about in working is the one conferred he had a mistress named alice glass that had not been discussed. you had proof and shortly after you find that out, you get a call from the office of lady bird johnson and says she

would like to speak to you and talk to you. you know that she knows that you know. and you went to the interview because you are never interested in his sex life but now something was relevant to his career because she wasth pivotal. i was thinking could i go and sit with the former first lady if she knew what i knew? it is terrifying to think about. >> can i just say. >> do whatever you want to do. >> i wasn't going to write about all of his affairs becauseir most were one or two night stands and didn't have significance. i can't remember if it's in this book but i'm reading all the letters. johnson is in australia during

the second world war so you are allowed one call back to the united states and a new franklin rooseveltseco as his protége said if you need advice call the white house. all of a sudden here is a telegram and it says lyndon, lyndon, everybody else thinks you should run for the senate i thank you should run in the house and said hope we can have that birthday party, alice. i didn't know who she was. i didn't know this name. shortly after that it's just sheer luck when you set up in the reading room at the johnson library the archiver's

desk it all has to go through her she says it's for you i go up to the desk and they say there are two women here who would like to speak to you. i go down and they said we read the powerbroker so we know you will find out about alice. [laughter] and we want to tell you about her because she wasn't another bimbo she was really important in his life. so to find out about her, she came from a little town in texas and was a great hostess in washington. she had a grand salon she came from the middle of nowhere. toever knew i would go

marlon and talk to her friends to try to get a picture of her. i hope there is no one hear from marlon texas. [laughter] no one would go to marlon texas. [laughter] except for any otherer reason. and then i got a call from a mutual friend who lived in marlon they called everybody lady bird, bird. bird knows you are in marlon so she knows that you know about alice. and i waste interviewing her and all of a sudden and her secretary was standing at my desk to say she wants you to come to the ranch.

so were sitting down, i'm talking too long. >> no no. >> she said at the head and i said at her right hand with my stenographers notebook and without a word of preamble she starts to talk about alice glass how beautiful and elegant she was. id remember her in a series of the most beautiful dresses. and me not that beautiful. he followed the rest ofht his life and was a 29 -year-old congressman when she met him she said turn those arms to your advantage and where with cufflinks. she also said at various times

heat on - - he saved his political career which seemed dramatic to me because herman brown with the finances of johnson's early rise came to a collisionea point. he was getting contracts but at the same time wanted to build low income housing project and mostly mexican-americans he owned most of the houses and was getting a good income and was a enraged. the chief lobbyist said he was about to turn on linden and when he turned he never turned back.

>>host: and he needed him. he cannot afford this collision. >> now. and for him to finance his own career alice said have him down to my estate in virginia and sat him down and said here's an easyhele compromise ge lynn one - - linden the dam and he can have the land. there were various times he went to her for advice. was like a 25 year of course i don't know this the sexual part ended two or three years. even as vice president years later he would drive down to

her estate in virginia to n .nd the day with her >>host: you are in the room with lady bird and it just goes on said that it was a evenl relationship though undoubtedly she would have known there was. >> i didn't hear the question. >> it's pretty dirty and now i'm embarrassed. [laughter] trying to think of another journalist and biographer who sits with the former first lady to discuss. it is a captivating moment. >> is the only interview i evers had i could not bear to look at the person i was interviewing even once. i just kept taking notes i cannot look at her. >> talk about your process to

hold the documents in turn every page whether the hill country or capitol hill to experience so you can feel it. and then you fit with that before you go to thefo typewriter. now i feel like a prosecutor. do you use an electric typewriter? [laughter] that is your process. why does it help to go long hand first? why didn't you move to a computer? >> because i'm too fast. when i was at princeton the

incident that i was in a creative writing course and was by a court the gentleman so i took the course for two years every two weeks. and i thought i was fooling him. we used to call it pulling the all nighter. i thought i was fooling him how much work went into it. then the very last session he

handed back my short story and then he said but you will not achieve what you want unless you stop thinking with your fingers. then you realize someone has seen right through you. he knew it was too easy and i didn't put any effort. i can rewrite fast. but for the powerbroker i started to realize how complex and to explain how robert moses got his power, i not only have to think about it which was really hard for me. so i decided to slow myself dow down. >>host:'s a right you write in longhand and then type and the revisions. you are a craftsman and methodical. >> you are very complementary

economy a craftsman to say i am slow. [laughter] >>host: your standard for biography is so high you will spend years working on one phase of the book and it occurs to must be difficult to read other people's biographies because you hear it and then this person could have gone further because your standards are so high. can you enjoy somebody else's or do you say that you blew it and throw it across the room? [laughter] >> no. i don't have that feeling of other biographies. there are a lot of terrific

biographies out there. >>host: okay. that was no fun. [laughter] >> i'm out of my league. >>host: that is me. there are so many times in this book working how important you feel imagination is for a biographer. so then you think now on - - cu, they get the documents and the people and you do the legwork and construct the narratives. imagination doesn't come in. so it was clear you spent a lot of time when you find out about a moment in moses life

where he was trying to imagine make a deal with manhattan and deal with the dirty train coming through to describe moses and hishi white suit and to re-create in a novelistic way but it is biography and imagination. >> imagination is key but it is a biography. the reason i could talk about robert moses envisioning the whole west side highway with huge great public works project is because i read one

day frances perkins was roosevelt secretary of labor. but as he a woman she and robert moses used to walk around new york. one day she wrote in her oral history, one day they were going toin a picnic so at that time the new york central railroad were taking cattle and pigs to the slaughter houses. so there was constant smog over the whole western shoreline of manhattan. the city could not get her on - - get near the waterfront. then she wrote that oral histor history. suddenly standing beside her to say this could be the most

beautiful thing in the world. you have this great highway and i will have to turn downat sound buildings and the baseball field should be there. and as i am reading that is exactly how we built it 25 years later. so then we could put things together to tell me many afternoons to come back from work with central park west to go all the way over to riversidet drive. and a phd from oxford with a municipal staffer and is envisioning something as the largest public works of that

type and it took him 25 years. so with a group of facts this is what he was thinking otherwise i couldn't. >>host: you need the big bricks ofou fact and mortar imagination. >> yes. that's a great way to put it. you need the bricks first. [laughter] >>host: i never felt so stupid in my life. [laughter] you talk about something that's very personal in this book and say you did not grow up in a house of books. and that was not part is something that was important

to your dad. your mother became ill when you wereda young and she had a dying wish to change the trajectory of your life. >> yes. my mother got very sick when i was five there's nothing they can do so she died when i was 11. my father spoke english that came here from poland but his language with his friends was yiddish. but before she died she made him promise to send me to the horace mann school that became

the center of my boyhood. >>host: and that horace mann you got your first taste ofoo journalism? >> yes. and then 60 years ago. the first remarkable thing is we are all still alive. [laughter] so if we get it from the table and we haven't set the date for the next meeting and then to say you didn't set a date and i said that's what is keeping us alive. [laughter] >>host: whatever works. you snagged every prestigious

prize but the biggest honor is horace mann? >> yes. nobody has ever asked me about that. i have been waiting a long time. [laughter] [applause] >>host: and what is this today? somebody at npr is asking. send in the next hippie. please go ahead. [laughter] this is a big deal. >> i forgot what we were saying. [laughter] >>host: of all the prizes the horace mann prize. >> some years ago horace mann asked if they would like to name a prize afterhe me because it's something that i believe in and what i said earlier

that not to have a history or biography to endure but if we say why do people still read? try reading his sentences. he is great. they named the prize horace mann for literary excellence and that was the biggest thrill but now that then that increases. and then the

one professor so that makes me feel good and then also to come full circle like that and then to come back and your name the kids are getting the prize. >> so why aren't you excited? i will act excited if you want but it happens to somebody else. >> it occurred to me reading about these men that you write about and devoted your life to. they say they never saw anybody work that hard. but the work ethiccurreshihi fos at a time there is some similarity to the people that you write about. is that fair to say? >> is that a complement? [laughter] >>host: yes. that's one of the things i find? inspiring about you and this book living in the era of add and everyone is on their phoner phone, no one can pay

attention. you and your wife took a vow of poverty practically to work on a moses years on - - book and disappeared for eight years with no real evidence this would be a big success that is counter to theco entire culture with devotion to work and doing your work and doing it well. there are elements you find unfavorable but there is also amazing qualities and both are incredibly hard-working people and thate' must resonate. >> that's very perceptive. the quality that they shared

and then the unbelievable amounts of work. but my publisher never asked me when we deliver. i have never been asked when the book will bee done. it takes me so many years it's easy to fool yourself you are working hard because nobody is checking up. i do everything i can to remind myself it is a job people make fun of me to where it jacket and a tie but that's what people di did. so i write down every day how many words.

>> the one thought that struck on - - struck me but in your office posing and your in this room was a very strong work ethic but the truth is i'm telling you all the stuff i don't usually talk about. [laughter] but then you get worked up because you can't wait to get into work my wife said a few months ago do you know what time it is? >> i said don't tell me. i don't want to know. >>host: hemingwayqu used to say i would stop before the well

was dry so i knew i could have a beginning in the morning. he would not exhaust the fuel take it one writing session. >> yes. you're the first person who is ever mentioned that. [laughter] >>host: why am i in comedy? i am wasting my life and i can be doing some real shit here and i'm not doing it. >> you ask terrific questions. i wrote my senior thesis at princeton and hemingway. he said i always stop when i know what the next sentence will be so i can start the next day. i do try to do that. that's the best piece of advice i ever got. >>host: just stop a little

shy. so you are in there in the office, 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. you have to do more words. do you ever think i could pop out and see a movie? do you ever just sneak out and nobody has to know about it? or something? >> never in my entire life. [laughter] >> there's good movies. you are missing out. someday want to knock on your door at 3:00 o'clock with prepaid tickets and take you to the movies. >> would you go with me? >> if i don't answer it's because i'm so deep in the work. >>host: that's what they all say to me. that's what every girl said to me when i asked her out.

[laughter] i am deep in the work. i will open to questions now from the audience. >> thank you for flying down here mr. caro. a huge fan my girlfriend is probably sick of me mentioning robert caro at dinner parties. i read your new york times piece i feel like i found a kindred spirit so how did you work on this piece and then how did you get the white

whale. >>host: you're asking the wrong guy a question. i did not write the piece. john. [applause] he heard about the rumor i was obsessed with mr. caro in the unhealthy way. he wrote that story. we made this happen i use "the new york times" to guilt him into talking to me and it's the greatest thing i have ever done. >>. >> is there anything in the life of moses are johnson the found inspirational what to do or how to be or what not to be? is there anything you feel you learned from the personalities

you have applied in your own life? >> that such a good question. with both of them i guess i didn't put it in these terms before. the most important thing is to keep working at something i guess moses envisioned the west side highway in 1912 when didn't build it until 1937. he envisioned jones beach and it seemed impossible to create something like that. is a his passing medicare and

medicaid, headstart, you say he is working all the time to change the votes in the senate it's very impressive to me. but it never stopped. >> thank you for coming here and doing this for everybody. i member the coverage for the national senate that it would cover the presidency but at what point did you realize the presidency of johnson had to be dividedes into two books?

>> [laughter] yes. at the time i started there were seven johnson and biographies there was a chapter or two on his youth none of them seem to have enough detail for me but then i realize there is this incredible story. or the texas two-step. [laughter] but telling the stories about johnson ruthless as a young man no matter what lyndon johnson was like we loved him

and it took a while to sink in they were talking about electricity. what does that mean cracks that is turning on a light switch and then you said this is incredible to transform the lives of these people to bring electricity to this area there is no damn for the hydroelectric power. so then they will have to lay tens of thousands of lines to the isolated farmhouses. so to say i will tell the story i also told ina it's

hard. want to show what government can do for people. what it's like to be old in america to retire with social security and it's hard to show that because there are cross currents and economic background and other immigrants but here we have the tenth congressional all district cut off from everything. the only thing that changes the avenue congressman lyndon

johnson. if i can examine i can show how government can help so constantly that i never thought of this. i want to do this. >> then you start to write about vietnam and a lot of people have speculated had president kennedy lived he would not have the domestic legislation that johnson got from vietnam. what do you think of that speculation? >> the legislation was not going anywhere. in many ways kennedy was a great president.

the day he was assassinated that would never beto passed. so johnson's legislative genius pick that up i will take a pass because they haven't written that yet were thought that throughth yet. so certainly with vietnam is a verbal story but to turn out the same way am not ready to answer. >> what led you to select

robert moses? >> and incidents in my youth. i was a reporter at newsday so i started to do investigative wor work. i had a couple of minor journalistic awards. very minor but when you win anything you thank you know everything. i thought i understood political power. than robert moses wanted to build another bridge he built the triborough bridge and the frogs next bridge he wanted one between oyster bay. newsweek assigned to me to look into it. it was a terrible idea to generate so much traffic the long island expressway would have needed 12 extra lanes just to handle the traffic coming from new england but

that appears would have cause pollution so i ruth the one - - wrote those stories i spoke to governor rockefeller, the speaker of the assembly, everyone understood idea.s the world's worst i wrote a story and said the bridge is dead. and i thank you better come back up here. i said i think i care that bridge. [laughter] but robert moses was that. yesterday. i drove back up that i spoke

because it that it was the world's greatest adf. you thank you know about that you thank you live in democracy and power that comes from being elected. here is a guy who was never g elected to or jeff more governor than the mayor or anything put together. >> he held his power 44 years in shaking this you have no

idea where he get the power or anybody else. that was the moment but i didn't really have time that you don't get a chance. but then i became the person who goes to harvard for one year. remember. first i iu ye ina mother was sick. i was alone a lot of the time. the foundation had social event events. i like to go by myself. i spent time in the office and i thought of power broker. when i finish doing moses i really thought that was a book about power in the cities and i wanted to do national power. >> you mentioned at the end of working that you once met your style lyndon johnson?

>>host: the one time in your life you actually saw lyndon johnson. >> yes. the one time i saw him. i never heard talk to him. i was a substitute political reporter when he ran against goldwater he came where i was with the other reporters and i think we actually should cans but that was the only time i saw him in the flesh. >> this is more thanan an honor and more fan boy of the first couple johnson books it was hard to get those people to talk and then you were attacked by jack but then he did the about-face and praised you to high heavens rightfully didn't make it easier for you to get interviews subsequently?

>>host: he is asking after the early books came out you took a lot of heat from johnson's friends especially jack. and he said that he turned around and praised you. so did that mean a lot to you? >> it wasn't just jack. a lot of the johnson people who attacked me and would not talk to me at theat beginning , they almost all came around and really have been very helpful. i was in austin last night. [inaudible] really?

[laughter] where were you? >> we move this man. [laughter] >> very quickly. i heard your books are not johnson library in the gift shop to? >> they were in for a number of years but now they do. in fact the wonderful dinner they had last night actually with the johnson foundation sort of said they regretted the hostility towards me. [laughter] >>host: that is fantastic and amazing. [applause] >> any chance a new edition of power broker would be

published with those 300,000 words you had to cut? >> you live in help. [laughter]r i would like to. but it's not so easy to do that. you don't just put it back. it is a lot of work but i hope to do that. >> if you worked on a word processor or computer.es er[laughter] you can hit one button and it restores automated - - automatically. [laughter] >> please comment on operation texas. operation texas? are you familiar with that? >> no.

>> that's okay. i only read history and power and you are the finest biographer. [applause] that johnson had a number of but then to read about rayburn and richard russell who was the most pivotal or most. >> and those that you mention a call.

the two that share the same characteristics and then they would feel at home to spend much time as they could and were instrumental in raising to power and they never made the protége.

that and those that were friend of johnson said but lyndon johnson understood it all but if i had gone to southwestern texas i might have turned out like that to. [laughter] >> doing interviews with people so to know what they are shading or not civic on

never believe anything me in the interview once but then there are several hundred pages of typed notes and then the other people that are involved but then to say he never allowed minutes to be taken ats. his actual meetings. but then you check it against the notes.

one way or another they are not trying to miss leave you and it is not. >> are there other biographer and lawn - - biographers he had to read part of it but i remember that but to me it has to be ration and one way or another have influenced me.

>> thank you for being here and for your work. i'm a journalist with aspirations of writing like yourself. can use speak to your relationship especially at the beginning of your career? even that you had to sell your house to cover living expenses. was doubt president or is that justat the tip that is missing? >>host: a really good question i was interested to bring at. >>host: you sold your that she

has no money and she gets the records for you and the question is that you are writing a book sure how long it will take but then to go out and support you and doubt? >> so the first thought was not godly or in the same publishing house. used to say i started the car

berkshires but then a $2500 advance. i didn't have any savings and i said i would it be done in nine months. [laughter] but now they will pay me for a year value back in august. but then we were out of money. i cameme home one day and. we had bought it at 45000 and so they as 20000. then the next couple years we were broke.

i finally wrote half a million but then he took me to a very expensive stage. >> i said i good. [laughter] >> he saidid we like the book and basically can i have the other $2500? these stick in my mind he said oh no you didn't i understand m. you we like the book and what you to continue but nobody will read a book aboutng moses. be prepared for a very small printing we are not to go

beyond. that was a bad. but then we buy out of places to get money and then to take over the publishing house but then just to let them now and then she called and said to me but you have to tell me something. why are you worried? 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.