foundation's lifetime achievement medal for distinguished contribution to american letters to robert a. caro this, and a singularly appropriate one. bob's career has been crowned with laurel. he has been widely recognized as the greatest biographer of our times, one might well argue of all time. he has been celebrated as the most consequential interpreter of the american 20th century. his magisterial accounts of the careers of robert moses and lyndon johnson have fundamentally altered our understanding of the acquisition and the deployment of power. his stature in the first rank of american journalists is beyond dispute. his passion for getting the story right and his commitmentnt and that of his great partner,nt ina cing aro, to -- caro, to pursue every lead, every source, every archival trace is the stuff of legend. his many honors and awards including two pulitzers, a national book award, two national book critics circle awards, the gold medal from theh american academy, the parkman prize, the national humanities medal bear witness to that pursuit. so, too, his impact on a generation of j

and not long thereafter, i got david maraniss' book which is the start of a truly magnificent biography on the part of robert caro on johnson. so my book is not a biography at all, it's really about the theme that i've been writing about a lot of my journalistic life which is race. it's maybe a biography in disguise, there are biographical aspects to it, but it's all about obama and race. and it was also a book written in the shadow of or in light of obama's own memoir which he wrote, remarkably, when he was 32. who writes a memoir when they're 32? especially an obscure state senator? and in an examination of what that book itself is, "dreams from my father," which it comes in a long line of african-american autobiography which is one of the most spectacular and rich genres of american fiction. so it is, indeed, has biographical aspects, but it really is about race. and if you take into consideration the book's original title and jon's title, "the promise," i think we're all thinking now about to what degree does obama fulfill his promise both as this historical america as the first african-american president, bu