Program date: April 22, 2019
Historian and biographer Robert A. Caro, in conversation with David M. Rubenstein, gives an unprecedented glimpse into his own life and the poignant, exhilarating, and harrowing experiences that shaped the research and writing of his acclaimed books. He will discuss the defining moments of his illustrious career, including interviewing the mighty Robert Moses; discovering the extent of Moses’ political power; how daunted he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library; and what it was like to meet with witnesses who were personally impacted by the momentous lives of the men he chronicled.
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 Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Francis Parkman Prize. In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal. Caro graduated from Princeton, was later a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and worked for six years as an investigative reporter for Newsday. He lives with his wife, the writer Ina Caro, in New York City, where he is at work on the fifth and final volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson. His most recent book is Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, a memoir of his experiences as a researcher and writer, offering a first-hand perspective on the process and personal impact of writing his landmark biographies.
David M. Rubenstein (moderator), an American philanthropist, is co-founder and co-executive chairman of The Carlyle Group.