“The greatest political biographer of the modern era.”
—The Sunday Times (UK)
HIS BOOKS
“Caro has forever changed the way we think about, and read, American history…Although the amount of research Caro has done for these books is staggering, it’s his immense talent as a writer that has made his [body of work] one of America’s most amazing literary achievements” (NPR).
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the National Book Award
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized, and I’m sure it helped to shape how I think about politics.
—President Barack Obama, presenting Robert Caro with the National Humanities Medal
HIS HONORS
For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, twice won the National Book Award, three times won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Humanities Medal, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that “exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.”
Robert A. Caro Awarded the Bodley Medal
Caro was recently honored by Oxford University’s Bodley Library—one of the oldest libraries in England—with its highest honor, the Bodley Medal, awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of books and literature, libraries, media and communications, science and philanthropy. The original Bodley Medal was struck in 1646. On the 400th anniversary of the Bodleian Library, copper metal saved from a renovation of the library’s original roof was given to the Royal Mint to create a set of one hundred replicas of the original medal, and the library started granting awards. To date, the restruck Bodley Medal has been awarded to only 30 individuals.
At a ceremony at Carnegie Hall, Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, said, “Caro’s work demonstrates a rigorous respect for facts and the persistent determination of a researcher. There could be no better person to inaugurate the Bodley Lecture in North America and to receive the Bodley Medal.”
NEWS
The Power Broker at 50
Five decades after its publication, The Power Broker endures as a revered classic: “A consensus Great American Biography, a landmark in our journalism but also a classic of our literature,” says the New York Times Book Review. “Caro invented a new kind of nonfiction narrative…in which authors wholly abandon themselves to their subjects, embrace every aspect, good and bad…with remorseless fidelity to the facts…An epic.”
THE ARCHIVE
The Robert A. Caro Archive
The Robert A. Caro Archive was acquired by The New York Historical, the oldest museum in New York City, and is now open to researchers in its Patricia D. Klingenstein Library. Two exhibits, “The Power Broker at 50” and “Turn Every Page,” are on view at The New York Historical and offer a window into the archive’s treasures.
“The Power Broker at 50” exhibition has been extended through August 3, 2025. Tickets and more information are available here.
When I was still very young, an old newspaper editor said to me: “From now on, you do investigative work.”
I responded with my usual savoir faire: “But I don’t know anything about investigative reporting.”
The editor looked at me for what I remember as a very long time. “Just remember,” he said. “Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamned page.”
FROM WORKING BY ROBERT CARO