Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing

James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson is generally considered to be the finest biography in the English language. Boswell spent years by Johnson’s side, taking voluminous daily notes of the great man. But Boswell, wherever he is now,

shouldn’t be sitting or lying on his laurels. Robert Caro’s monumental works on the life of Robert Moses, the man who built virtually all of the bridges, causeways, highways, parks and

playgrounds of 20th-century New York City and its environs, not to mention numerous impressive housing projects, and on the life of Lyndon Johnson, our 36th President (Caro is working on the fifth and final volume), are every bit as impressive as what Boswell achieved. Even more so, actually.

Of course, Caro didn’t get to spend his days shadowing his subjects, as Boswell did Johnson, but you would think he had. He conducted countless interviews with just about anyone who might shed light on his subjects. In many cases Caro

had numerous conversations and held multiple Q&A sessions with the same person. He continuously probed at what was actually said in particular situations, the way in which it was said, what the surrounding environment was, what the moods of the persons involved were and what was happening around them, such as what the demonstrators were chanting outside the White House. Many a time interviewees

would exclaim, “You already asked me that several times before!” But Caro knew what he was doing as he extracted priceless insights and information from the people he was questioning, who had long

forgotten or hadn’t realized

the light they could shed on what had taken place.

Caro is stunningly incisive

regarding his subjects’ personalities and

how they achieved levels of political power in a democracy that were probably without precedent—and what they used that power for. That is particularly true of Robert Moses, who was never elected to office yet was infinitely more

dominant than any of the New York governors or NYC mayors who held office during his 44 years as the building czar

of the region. In fact, Moses was probably the greatest builder in world history.

Certainly no other politician in modern times has run the U.S. Senate as effectively and productively as Lyndon Johnson did in the 1950s. Even Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t match the domestic

legislative achievements that Johnson accomplished when he took office after the assassination of John Kennedy and pushed through his Great Society agenda. Only Johnson could have gotten Congress to pass the monumental Civil

Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that finally gave African

Americans the franchise in the South.

As we await Caro’s final volume on Johnson’s presidency, we know he’ll clarify what Johnson did in Vietnam and spell

out the costs of that conflict on American society, then and to this day.

Just as impressive is the way Caro re-creates the worlds that these two men inhabited from the time of their births until their deaths, truly “the life and times of” writing at its best.

But to occupy readers until the Johnson volume is finished, Caro’s fascinating

book Working gives us insight into what makes him tick and why he chose Moses and Johnson for study. Call this a “memoirette.”

Caro’s unrelenting pursuit of facts and his insights will leave you in awe. For example, he knew

that Moses’ obsession to

build highways in the Big Apple meant the bulldozing of numerous community enclaves. But how were those displaced actually affected by the evictions? Caro took one mile of a partic-ular highway and tracked down, as best he could, those who got tossed out of their apartments or uprooted from their stores and places of business to learn, firsthand, how their lives had been impacted.

Or take the Hill Country of Texas, an

area bigger than New England, where

Johnson grew up. People there live on isolated farms. It was a harsh and lonely existence, and residents weren’t in the habit of

talking much to outsiders. So Caro, along with his wife and son, moved there for three years. Thus, he was able to vividly paint what life there was like and what Johnson had actually done in his youth.

Caro has no illusions about the nature of his subjects as he graphically chronicles their immense, undeniable achievements and their colossal shortcomings. He definitely proved, for instance, that the controversial 1948 Texas election that sent LBJ to the U.S. Senate, which he ostensibly won by 87 votes, was

actually stolen by ballot-box chicanery.

Yet Johnson, as a young congressman and against immense obstacles, brought electricity to the Hill Country. Caro vividly and movingly describes how grinding and severe existence, especially for women, was before the juice came.

After reading this brief, brilliant book, one can only say, “Wow!”