Robert Caro is esteemed biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. As he is at work on his 5th and final LBJ volume he publishes this little book talking about how works.
Caro grew up in Manhattan. He is a thorough New Yorker. His mother sent him to the Horace Mann school, which I assume is an elite school. He majored in English at Princeton. It is interesting to me that he is not a trained historian.
Caro started as an investigative reporter for Newsday. He became interested in New York real estate developer Robert Moses who built bridges, buildings, highways, and amusement parks, you name it in NYC and Long Island. Moses dominated New York city from the 60's into the 90's.
Caro published his 1200 page biography in 1974 to great acclaim. I shall not read it because I cannot relate to NYC real estate development. Caro's attraction to Moses is his fascinating with political power and how it can be used. Moses was never elected to any New York position, yet he seemed to have carte blanch over what he wanted to do to the NYC landscape. His accomplishments are all over the city.
The fascination with political power led to Lyndon Johnson. Caro published his first LBJ volume in 1982 after beginning his research in 1978. He has continued to research Johnson to this day in his 80's working on the 5th volume of his LBJ series.
Before publishing his first Johnson book, Caro and his wife spent three years in the Texas hill country which begins about 40 miles west of Austin. This is amazing. He wanted to experience first hand the world that produced Lyndon Johnson. He points out how empty and forlorn the Hill country was during LBJ's formative years
LBJ was embarrassed by his father, who, though a state legislator for a while, ended up going bankrupt and making the Johnson family a subject of ridicule. Johnson was motivated to not be like his father.
Caro loves going thru historical documents seeking the facts. He talks of accessing the LBJ files in Dallas at the LBJ library. Millions of documents so he and his assistant, his wife, had to be selective.
His Johnson doc search answered a big question. When LBJ entered Congress he was just another freshman congressman. Shortly thereafter he became know and sought after. Caro discovered that Johnson had a funding source with a company in Texas called Brown and Foot, which funded him the rest of his political career. Johnson had the source send money to other Democratic candidates which made LBj known in the Congress as a source of campaign cash. This was his first claim to political power. Caro only discovered this by painstakingly going thru documents in LBJ's millions of documents. A great example of a great historical research.
"So there was the proof that Lyndon Johnson had received money from Brown & Foot in October, 1940 (and that it had brought him into contact with 'The Boss,' Johnson's name for President Franklin Roosevelt." P. 91
LBJ brought electricity to the Texas Hill Country. He was a populist from the beginning.
The segregationists thought he was one of them from 1937 to 1957. Then came Johnson's efforts in the mild Civil Rights Act of 1957. Then the monumental Civil Rights Act of '64, Medicare, and the Voting Rights Act. Johnson fooled the segregations to the end when he was in a position to to make things happen.
Wee it not for Lyndon Johnson, this great legislation would never have happened. Pres. Kennedy would never have gotten it done.
After 10 years in the House, Johnson was elected to the US Senate by 87 votes over a man named Coke Stevenson. The winning votes surfaced late from a rigged box in south Texas. Johnson stole the election and it was upheld by the Supreme Court thanks to Hugo Black. History turned on a stolen election. Caro provides the proof. P. 113
Reading this book makes me realize that I never could have been an historian doing research.
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