Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Robert Caro has spent decades researching and chronicling the lives of notable men.
His biographies have focused on former President Lyndon B. Johnson (The Path to Power) and famed New York City planner Robert Moses (The Power Broker). Still, he says, "I never had the slightest interest in writing a book just to tell the story of a great man."
Instead, Caro is interested in power: "I wanted to use [Johnson's and Moses'] lives to show how political power worked; that's what I was interested in."
Caro points out that though Moses was never elected to anything, he's credited with developing many of New York City's highways, bridges and public housing units.
"He had more power than any mayor, more power than any governor, and more power than any mayor or governor combined," Caro says of Moses.
But uncovering the mechanisms of power can be difficult. Caro says his subjects sometimes didn't welcome his attention. Other times, he had to dig up long-buried facts or discern unseen motives during interviews. Caro writes about his process as a biographer in the new book, Working.
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