Join Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Caro and Rachel Syme for a conversation about Caro's magisterial biography career, from his early years reporting on Robert Moses for his award-winning work The Power Broker, to his decades-long project writing the multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson.
Universally acclaimed as a modern classic, The Power Broker was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of the 20th century. It is, according to David Halberstam, “Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.” And The New York Times Book Review said, “In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort.”
The first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, was cited by The Washington Post as “proof that we live in a great age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caro’s evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson’s unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually work, are–let it be said flat out–at the summit of American historical writing.” Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia University called the second volume, Means of Ascent, “brilliant. No review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.” And the London Times hailed volume three, Master of the Senate, as “a masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age.”
Now, with the publication of his fourth volume on LBJ, The Passage of Power, he speaks with Ms. Syme about the triumphs and pitfalls in his many years of chronicling lives.
Ticket with book includes Passage Of Power at a 20% discount.
Part of our On Biography series.
Brief Bio
Rachel Syme is the former books editor for National Public Radio and a current NPR contributor and contributing culture critic for Time Magazine. She is currently writing a biography of the love affair between Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham and author F. Scott Fitzgerald for Random House. She has read so many biographies that she often feels like she is living a hundred other lives in addition to her own.
This event is co-presented with McNally Jackson Books.
On Biography is a new conversation and reading series devoted to the craft of biography.
Host Rachel Syme joins leaders and emerging stars of the biography world to discuss the thrills and challenges of writing about a life. This series will explore the ethics of reading personal letters and diaries, the controversies that come with writing someone else's story and the excitement of uncovering a treasure in the archives.