have to say robert survives and makes something happens. so thank you all. >> up next from the robert caro symposium held in conjunction with the new york historical society's exhibition of his papers "turn every page inside the robert caro archive" it's the keynote address by the author himself. >> welcome again to the beautiful robert h. smith auditorium. whether you're joining us in person or via live stream, i've delighted to welcome another new york historical trustee who's joined us. our chair elect, agnes, i'd like to thank you for all you've done on behalf of new york historical, and all the good work, great work i know will happen under your leadership of our boards. so thank you for that and welcome. our keynote lecture today is turn every page, and it will be delivered by historian and biographer robert a. caro, reflecting on the poignant, exerating, thrilling experiences that have shaped his prolific career. the program lasts an hour, and it will include a question and answer session. the q&a will be cucked earlier in the day via note cards. you should have received a note card and pencil on your way into the auditorium. if not my colleagues are circulating in the auditorium, around the auditorium with note cards and pencils. the questions will be collected later on in the program. there won't be a formal book signing today, but presigned copies of mr. caro's books will be available for purchase on the 77th side of the building. we're so honored to have robert a. caro on our stage today. mr. caro has twice won the pulitzer prize for the biography, twice won the national book award, three times won the national book critic circle award and also won virtually every other major literary honor including the gold medal from the aamerican academy of arts and letters and our very own american history book prize as well. his second national book award was for lifetime achievement. in 2010 president barack obama awarded mr. caro the national humanities medal. in 2019 he published a memoir working. mr. caro graduated from princeton, was later a neeman fellow at harvard and worked for six years as an investigative reporter for news day. he's currently at work on the fifth and final volume of the years of linden johnson. just before we begin this part of the program, i ask once again to make sure anything that makes a noise like a cellphone is switched off and remember to keep your mask on. no photography except for our house photographers. and just before we welcome mr. caro to the stage, we are pleased to share with you a very special video tribute to mr. caro by our 42nd president, william jefferson clinton. >> i so wish i could be with all of you today at one of my favorite places in new york city, the new york historical society as you pay tribute to one of my favorite writers, the great robert caro. since the release of the power book nearly 50 years ago bob has given us the release of some of the greatest policy books ever written, always meticulously researched and always cut into the heart of the matter, capturing what drove people in power to make the decisions and how those decisions affected real lives both positively and negatively. i'll always remember the wonderful afternoon bob and i spent in my office in harlem just a few years ago talking about history and his writing process. i came away with an even greater appreciation for his work. and now that his archives is at the new york historical society, i can't wait to visit it soon. who knows, bob? maybe you could give me a tour of the visit but only if it doesn't pull you away from finishing that final volume of the lbj series. in all seriousness, i want to thank you for all you've done to help us expand our understanding of the past, the present leading to our ability to envision the possibility of the future. i wish you and i a wonderful celebration and many more years of continual good work. this is such a thrilling venue for me to have people who i admire and talked this morning about what is pretentiously call my archives. bill, lisa, jane, brenda, if i said what i wanted to about each of you i could use up the time allotted me. i'll just say from the bottom of my heart you've given me a day i'll never forget and thank you for. to have people i so much admire here to talk about me makes this day just -- the only word i can think of that's accurate -- thrilling. and today is thrilling also because it is in a way an announcement that my papers are here, and they're always going to be here. i'll tell you why one personal reason why i'm so happy, thrilled that they're here at the new york historical society. i grew up on central park west 94th street. my brother -- my mother got very sick when i was 5 and was pretty much bedridden after that. but every saturday her little sister, my aunt bea would come in. those saturdays were special to me when i was a little boy, and that's one reason that it's great for me they're here. there's another aspect to this story. people ask me when i wanted -- knew i wanted to be a writer. the only thing i can honestly answer to that is as far as i can remember, as far back as i can remember i always wanted to be a writer. i used to walk up central park west, i suppose, and have that in my thoughts. went back the long way when i was going through my papers to give them to historical society. i found a short story that i wrote. i couldn't tell if it was in the fifth or sixth grade, but it was a biography. it was called honk the moose. i started to read it and my overwhelming thought was it certainly 1 was long. when i no longer want to have my work preserved here, it sort of makes the perfect circle. i used the word "thrilling" before to describe my feelings. it's a corny word, but it's the right word to describe the way i feel today. so those are personal reasons, but there are professional reasons, historical reasons as well. some of us as you heard this morning call ourselves journalists. some of us call ourselves historians. but to me there's no real distinction between the two because at the bottom we're both after the same thing. there is, of course, as we said this morning -- brenda said it very well no truth with a capital "t," no simple truth, no unsimple truth either. but there are out there a hell of a lot of facts. and the more facts you can compile, the more facts you can find out, the closer you come to whatever truth there is. and that's what binds us all together, journalists and historians. as for myself, while i may have started as a journalist and now i'm called a historian, when i look back at my life, i don't see it that way. it seems to me that my life has been a single unbroken line. so much that i learn during my seven years as a reporter translated without a hitch into the books i wrote and helped me write them. journalists or historian, whatever the research i was doing, whether it was for a article or a book, in my opinion i spent my life doing the same thing. i'll try to illustrate that by giving an example. i was thrown into being an investigative reporter almost by accident without knowing really the first thing about being an investigative reporter. so they decided to sit me next to the great investigative reporter bob green who was a legend in his time in the newspaper business. he was a very hefty legend, i must say. bob weighed approximately 300 pounds. now, in the sitting room in those days we all sat in these little tin desks. so they put me next to bob green and he was sitting in his desk and i was sitting at my desk. but i certainly learned a lot from him. once we were doing a piece i remember it was about some state senator who was selling variances to put gas stations in a residential area, and we had to prove it by getting the real estate deed, seeing when properties had been bought, when they had been sold, how much, et cetera. and i wasn't having any luck finding out -- finding where the relevant records were in the county clerk's office, and i was on the telephone and green overhearing me said in exasperation you don't look for them under the name of the president, you look for them under the name of the president's secretary. that's how they file it so you can't find it. that's where i look and that's what i need. and now it's years later i i'm writing the biography of robert moses. he has this great dream for the bar off the south shore of long island called jones beach, and he envisions it to be a great public park. he envisioned it, you know, when he was a young man he used to take a little -- he had a summer home in babylon with his wife and two kids, and they had a little what he called a putt putt row boat, and every morning his wife would give him a couple of sandwiches, and he'd take the boat out all day. and he found himself attracted by this sandbar across the bay, and he would tell me about how the reeds were so thick he couldn't get near the sandbar. he'd pull up his pants, pull the boat through the weeds, but when he step out on that deserted sandbar he realized he was standing on the cleanest, whitest sandy beach he'd ever seen and he wanted to build a beach there. but he couldn't because for three years they didn't want city people coming out there, so they blocked it. and then suddenly in 1928 the machine switched and the legislators supported it, and the great bathing beach was created. why had they switched? what had gotten them to switch? so at that time i was talking to whoever was left of the old timers who remember 1928, and they said the reason was that moses had told -- had given the machine politicians, he was going to build a parkway from down through jones beach through what was then a very deserted part of long island. the land wasn't worth much. but, of course, wherever the exits to this parkway were, that land was going to become immensely valuable. and he told them where the exits were going to be so they could make money. so i had to prove that to say that's what i was told, but i couldn't write it unless i documented it. so i had to find out again who bought the land, who sold it when and how much. i used the very same methods that i had used as a reporter, but this very important for not only for everything, for the story of robert moses because i knew he had started out as this idealist, and a key part of his idealism and he would never deal with politicians, but he had turned to something very different. and now it seemed that this is the place he had turned. so i really needed to be able to prove this, and of course what i did i can't remember the details. but i looked in the county clerk's office under the names of the secretary of a new -- not the president but the secretary of a newly formed corporation of which a number of politicians were stock holders and found the proof that i needed. so it was the proof and the key to the great transformation of robert moses and in a way what transformed the whole landscape because of all that moses built that we've lived in ever since. so that discovery taught to be more precise, the key to the discovery, how to find the records was the key to the book. and the key to discovery was bob green's exasperated remark to the young reporter that was me that day in a newspaper city room. it was a key to a work of history, but the key came out of journalism, right out of that newspaper. there are so many ways what i learned as a journalist helped me, in fact, the key to my research as a historian. to me as i look back over my life as far as the research is concerned, the writing, of course, is a very different story. but as far as the research is concerned i've been doing the same thing all my life. the only difference is that for the first few years i was doing it to write newspaper articles, and for the last 50 years i've been doing it to write books. of all the similarities between the two professions, i guess the key one was the incident that gave rise to the title of this exhibition, "turn every page." i've told the story before, but this is the day to tell it again. when i went to work at news day, i was the first reporter -- first person to be hired in the news day sitting room from an ivy league college. that was because the managing editor was this very crusty old newspaper man who came right out of the herst papers in chicago in the 1920s. if you saw him he was a big, burly guy with a kind of stomach that looked big but wasn't soft at all. he used to wear black shirts with yellow ties and brown shirts with white ties. his head, he had no hair except for some around the back of his head and was always red because he started drinking from early in the morning. we never really knew if alan went to a college or not. he said he had, but we never were sure of that. but he certainly disliked graduates of prestigious universities and none had ever been hired. i was hired when alan was on vacation as sort of a joke to him. when he came back he wouldn't talk to me. my desk was sort of here and his office was there, and he'd walk past it and i'd say, hello, mr. hathaway, or good morning, mr. hathaway. he never said a word back. professionally, i didn't have to deal with him very much because i was the low end of the totem pole, i was doing an obituary working nights, but i also worked saturdays. and news day didn't publish sundays, so saturday afternoon there was only one person in the sitting room and it was me. this particular news day had been crusading against an attempt by the federal aviation agency. there had been an airport in the middle of nassau county called mitchell field, 1,246 acres. they no longer -- the air force no longer needed it as a base, and it therefore was going to be turned over to the county. and the question was what was the county going to do with it? the federal aviation agency wanted to turn it into a private airport so the that the executives of the corporations on long island could fly in and out on their private planes. news day wanted it to be used for a community college. i wasn't involved in this, but one saturday when i was there in the middle oof the afternoon the phone rang at the city desk. i picked it up and it was an official from the federal aviations agency saying that he really liked what we had been doing, and he knew the very files we wanted to look at to prove our point. and if i came down to it was then idlewild airport because president kennedy hadn't been killed yet, if i came down that very afternoon he'd show me the files and let me look through them. it happen to be the day of the news day picnic, so everyone was on the beach at fire island. of course there are no cellphones then, so i tried to call one editor after another. i couldn't get them. i finally got one editor who said, well, you'll have to go down and look at the files yourself. so i went down there. it was the first time, actually, i'd ever done anything looking through files, and there was no one sentence that proved the point, but you could put together enough from the conversation, the minutes of conversations and letters and all to prove that news day was right. and that was the reason it was too friendly with the executives of the corporation who were basically turning the last big hunk of land in nassau county over to them. since i wasn't going to write the story, the real reporters were going to write the story, i wrote a long memo and left them. so we were still living in long island and early monday morning the phone rings and alan hathaway's secretary june blum calls and says alan wants to see you right away. i said, well, we're in new jersey. she said alan wants to see you immediately. so i told ida, seeiest i was right not to move, i'm about to be fired. and all the way to news day i kept thinking how was a dignified way to take the news i was fired? when i get to the office, alan had an office in the corner that was glass enclosed and june waves me over there. and as i walk i see this big redhead of his bent over. he's reading something intently. as i get closer i see what he's reading is my memo. so i get to the door. he doesn't look up. i say mr. hathaway or whatever, and he waves me to a chair. after a while he looks up and says to me i didn't know someone from princeton could do -- like this. from now on you do investigative work. i said but i don't know anything about investigative reporting. alan looks up at me for what i still remember is a very long time and says just remember turn every page, never assume anything, turn every goddamn page. so i'll tell you one story -- one story among a hell of a lot that i could about how alan's advice, well, not so much advice as an order, turn every page, helped me throughout my life. i'm now at the linden johnson library. as bill kelly said this morning, they have 44 million documents. you weren't going to be able to turn every one of those pages, but you could narrow it down. i think there were only 267 boxes -- maybe 200,000 pages that dealt -- you actually couldn't read all those pages, but you could narrow it down to a couple of areas, and one uza particular month that seemed tattoo me was the key to how linden johnson began to amass political power. you could tell exactly how this change happened. he was a junior congressman, and there are letters in the files he's writing to older congressman are the letters from a junior to a senior. can i have a few minutes of your time? that was true up to the single month of october 1940. at the end of the month of october 1940 and for the entire rest of his career in the house of representatives the letters had a different tone the other way. it was the committee chairman, the senior congressman writing to this junior congressman, linden, can i have a few moments of your time? so what had happened? what changed in that moment, that month? well, i was doing a lot of interviewing, and i was told what had happened really was that he made himself the source of political money -- campaign contributions from the texas oil industry and texas contractors. so that was important. they told me that he got the money from george brown, george and herman brown who were the two principals of the great texas contracting and politically well-connected firm. i have been trying to talk to john brown for years. he wouldn't talk to me at all. i would call and his secretary would say he was busy, he never called back. i wrote him letters. he'd never spnld. but i needed to talk to him if if i wanted him to understand what would happen in this month. one day i had an inspiration how to get him to talk. herman brown, the older brother, died. george idolized his older brother. and what he had done, he was trying to build things in various -- around texas with his brother's name on it. there was a herman brown laboratory at bryce university, et cetera. so one day i'm in this little hill country town, and it's a little town like a scene out of a western set with wooden buildings all around a square. but on that square there was one gleaming white, two-story building and on it said herman brown memorial library. i knew one had tried to get him to talk to me before. if i called him and i had an inspiration right at that moment to say to george brown to get him to talk to me, i went into a phone booth and i remember right on that square put in a call and said i'd like to talk to mr. brown one more time. i said, posh, i want all you have to do is say one sentence to him. tell him it doesn't matter how many buildings he builds and names after herman brown, nobody is going to know who herman brown was unless he's in a book. so posh made the call, and about 6:00 the next morning the phone rings and it's george brown himself inviting me to lunch. and he tells me that, in fact, what had happened is linden johnson had asked for money, and he had raised the money, $30,000. he remembered that was a lot of money in those days, 1940, and that in fact had bought texas the influence in congress that it needed. so he had told me that. i basically got the story except i couldn't use it unless i had some sort of documentation. and i had been told over and over again that i'd never get any sort of documentation about linden johnson's moves because it was said to me over and over again linden never wrote anything down. but then i thought george brown was a businessman. he wrote things down. i started writing and i remember his letters were in a lot of different files, and in the johnson library you request files and an archivest brings the files up to you in box. in fact, one of the archivests and the one who's been helping the most over the years is claudia who's been nice enough to come today, and you look at these boxes each cram with papers and you really say, you know, your heart sort of sinks at how long it's going to take you to look through these pages. but whether consciously or not i was then in the habit of turning every page. and i remember finding what i needed in some file. you're turning page after page, letter after letter that have no significance to you, and all of a sudden there was a yellow western union telegraph form. and on it was signed by george brown dated october 19, 1940, and it said, linden, you were supposed to have the checks by friday. and on the bottom one of johnson's secretaries had written a reply. all of the folks you talked to have been heard from. i am not acknowledging their letters, so be sure to let these fellows know their checks have been received. well, that was part of it, okay. but who were these fellows? who were the people who had given the $30,000? let me tell you there are moments when you really felt it was beyond you to find out. i actually found the answer in a file one of several called general unarranged. there were some file folders and there was some secretary 30 years before had shoved a bunch of letters. they were sticking out in all directions. but in there there was acknowledgements from six texas oil contractors who had given the money to linden johnson. i remember i thanked alan in my mind for sticking that out. so that was how he got the money, but how had he handed it out? what had provided him with political power? how did he use that money to create political power? this was a man who never wrote anything down. but, okay, i learned that he had taken an office suite for the month of october in an office building in washington called the munsey building out of which this little nascent, democratic, congressional campaign committee would work. and in that office building with him was a secretary named walter jenkins. about walter jenkins, they said, he wrote everything down. and i'm looking through the papers there, and there are four pages clipped together with a paper clip. there are three type columns. on the left-hand column is the name of the congressman and the district he represents. in the center is what he needs the money for. the amounts are so small in terms of today. linden, $1,500, and i can buy another round of ads. linden, $500 for poll watchers. they're trying to steal the election. and in the right-hand column the third type column is the amount of money that the congressman asked for. as i said a small amount, $1,500, $2,000, $500 sometimes. but in the left-hand margin in linden johnson's handwriting is what he decided to do with each request. sometimes he wrote if he was going to give the full amount, okay. if he was going to give part of the amount, he wrote okay $500 or okay $1,000 or whatever. but sometimes he wrote, none. he wasn't going to honor the request. and sometimes he wrote, none out. so i asked one of johnson's assistants what did he mean when he wrote "none out," and the assistant whose name is actually john conley said to me "none out" meant he was never going to get money from linden johnson. linden never forgot and he never forgave. so there it was. you sometimes hear in political science courses how difficult it is to track the exact influence -- the exact influence of economic power on political power. you didn't have -- you didn't have any trouble seeing it here. this was -- this gave linden johnson his first toe hold on national power, and i found it all really like trying to turn a lot of pages. so i'm writing now about a guy, linden johnson, who had his own version of alan's saying. linden johnson's saying was if he told his staff in a campaign if you do everything, you'll win. want to know what everything is, i'll give you one example of that. one of the key southern senators in washington was a man named harry byrd who was the senator from virginia i think for six terms, 36 years. he really doesn't like the young linden johnson. linden was brash. he's always pushy. he's a courtly southern gentleman, and harry byrd was a very courtly one. but his daughter had a daughter named westwood, and westwood dies in a hunting accident. so the funeral is going to be held in winchester in virginia about 72 miles from washington. and the day of the funeral there's a heavy rainstorm. johnson persuades another freshman named warren from washington state. he says warren we have to go to the funeral, every senator is going to be there even the republicans. of course no senators were there, but linden johnson told an aid of his, a friend of his like a friend to him when he got back, you know, we were the only senators there. we were standing on one side of the grave and harry byrd was on the other. and in the middle of lowering the coffin he turned up -- he turned his face-up and looked at us. and he looked at me a long time. he said i don't know what that look meant, but i bet that look was a very important look. it was. in a lot of ways when linden johnson needed something out of harry -- the committee of which harry byrd was the chairman of the senate finance committee, somehow he almost always seemed to get it. in the book i'm writing now the finance committee has jurisdiction over medicare in the senator. harry byrd by this time, so that was 1938 -- i forget the year, '38 or '39 the funeral. it's now 1965. linden johnson is trying to pass medicare. somehow in previous years when medicare went into the finance committee it never seemed to come out. harry byrd delayed the hearings or didn't open the hearings or scheduled so many witnesses that the hearings would never end or had witnesses coming back again. linden needs him to agree that the bill in 1965 which is still in the house of representatives, when it comes over to the senate, it's going to go into to the finance committee. and what linden johnson needs harry byrd to agree to is not to delay the hearings, so he tricks him. by this time harry byrd is old. he's not the politicians or the senator he once was. he's an old man. but he's always liked linden johnson. so johnson tricks him. he asks him to come down to the white house for some meeting in the cabinet. but he doesn't tell harry byrd that television cameras are going to be there. and he turns with the cameras running -- he turns to harry byrd and says now, harry -- this is my version of his quote. it's not exactly right. now, harry, when the bill comes over from the house, is there any reason you can't start the hearings right away? and harry byrd says flustered, not that i know of. and linden says, so we'll have the hearings right away and they will be expeditious hearings? and larry byrd says yes in front of the television cameras, and he's not even angry about it because he's so fond of linden johnson. reporters ask him what he thinks about it. he says, well, if i'd known i was going to be on television, i mind have worn a better suit. and he holds the hearings. and johnson's relations with harry byrd are probably summed up by what happens during the next year when harry byrd's wife dies. linden johnson goes to the funeral, and after the funeral as harry byrd's car is driving away, the president of the united states, linden johnson, bends over and kisses the old man's hand. so we're talking about a politician who wasn't afraid to do anything that was necessary to get somebody on his side. there's a lot of material that i think our history will be interested in those archives at the linden johnson library. i'll tell you one piece of material that's there in the exhibit on the second floor of this building right now. it's a manuscript written not by me, pages written not by me but by a man named louie salis. the key to lyndon johnson's life was the 1948 election. he's now been in the house of representatives for 11 years. he's really not getting anywhere, and he keeps saying the house is just too slow, too slow for his ambitions. he decide to give up his house seat and run for president although the guy he's running against is going to be the most popular governor in the history of texas. at the end of this is the election that johnson has gambled everything on, his aides call it the all or nothing election, either he's going to win it or in effect going to be out of politics. and at the end of the election he's 30,000 votes behind. but he starts stealing votes in the mexican sections of san antonio, but he's still going into the last few weeks several hundred votes behind. then six days after the election, they find a box from precinct 13 in the desert, and it's got ballots in it. it's got 202 ballots in it, and 200 of them are cast for linden johnson, and he wins the election by 87 votes a week later. so louie salis was the enforcer for the border counties, the guy named george par brpg, a tough, burly guy. he always wore a revolver with a handle so long it reached down to his knee. and he was the precinct judge they had put in to make sure things went right. so a hearing is actually held, and louie salis is put on the stand. he denies that anybody stuffed anything into that ballot box. but he's about to be cross examined. but as the cross-examination is going and about to start, a man rushes into the courtroom and he's carrying a telegram. and it's from the office of supreme court justice hugo black. and what it says basically is don't -- the hearing is now called off and in fact there's never naert hearing. so this is a key element in the story of linden johnson's life. he was to go onto the senate and then he was to become president. but if he had lost the election, there would probably have -- actually probably have been no further political activity. he was talking about going into running his wife's radio and television stations. so when i came along there were already seven biographies of linden johnson that had been written. they all, of course, went into the selection, seemed like there were several hundred articles that had been written about the stealing or unstealing about the 87-vote election. he had the nickname landslide linden. and they all sort of contained -- they all either accepted the contention of johnson's partisans, that he had never stolen anything in the vote or never stole any votes. or they would say no one would ever know if the election was stolen. that's a sentence i read over and over again. no one will ever know if the election was stolen. i said that i was never going to -- i felt that i was never going to write a book in which i said no one will ever know if the election is stolen unless, in fact, i've done everything possible to find out if the election was stolen. and the key to that in my mind was finding louie salis because everything else pointed to it being stolen, but, in fact on the stand the man who knew the most, the precinct judge had testified that it wasn't. so i drove back down to the valley along the border, and i go into the mexican cafes and ask about louie salis. and over and over again i heard he's dead, he's dead. but then one man said, no, you know, he's not dead. he went back to mexico. turns out salis had murdered a man and sort of fled down to some town in mexico and had been moving from town to town over some years. now, people ask me why my books take so long to write. let me tell you -- let me tell you that finding a mexican gentleman who's trying not to be found takes a lot of time. and finally i found that, in fact, he had moved back to texas and was living in a trailer in the garden in the backyard of his daughter in houston. so i wasn't going to give him a chance to say he didn't want to talk to me, so i didn't call. i flew to houston and went right out to his house. remember salis is this tall, burlily guy. i had this image of this tall man. so i knock on the door i'm expecting to be looking up at this guy, and instead the door is opened by a very frail old man. and i said to him my name is bob caro and i'm writing a book on linden johnson, and louie salis says then you want to know about box 13. and we went inside, and he says without me saying anything, you know i have written it all down. and there's a trunk, sort of an old-fashioned trunk, big trunk in the corner. and he opens it up and he takes out a manuscript of 97 typed and several hand written pages. and on the title page it says box 13. and i start reading it, and it contains the sentences, i lied on the stand. and then it says, in fact, and he details exactly how the 200 votes were put in there. so i said can i copy this? and he said there's a copy machine at the 7-eleven. so we went to the nearest 7-eleven, and i copied it. and national it's in the exhibition, up on the second floor, and it's right outside the door to the library there. it's on the lower right-hand corner. and you can see it yourself. so future historians writing about linden johnson will thanks to the new york historical society be able to read it for themselves. there's a lot of stuff in my papers that i boastfully think future historians will want to read. i don't think that more than a few percent of what i've learned in all the time i've been doing research into linden johnson's life and robert mose's life that have made it into my book. there are so many interviews, so many notes that i think women help cast some light on our country's histories. there's so many interview, hundreds of interviews, really, 522 interviews with people who can never be interviewed across anymore because they are long dead. when i did the book on the senate i tried to find everybody who could help me understand the senate of the 1950s. all the senators, the very few who are still alive, their assistants right down to the cloakroom attendants, it's a great story. and as i say a very small percentage of it actually made it into the books. what was politics like when america was still rural as america ozstill rural for the first 125 years or so of its existence? what was politics like? what was it like to campaign? that was fascinating to me. there's a book called -- there's a chapter in my first volume called the first campaign. it's about a rural campaign, how linden johnson won a campaign when he was an unknown candidate going from little town to little town and individual farm to farm running for congress. very little of that made it into the book. so we're in a time right now in america right now when the truth is more important today than ever before. and therefore we're at a time when facts, the basis of truth are more important than they've ever been before. and not just the truth of current events but the truth about our history. to whatever small extent these papers at the new york historic society now cast any light on that history, i'm glad that they are here and that they'll be here forever. thanks a lot. [ applause ] >> thank you, so much, robert robert caro. this was spell-binding, should i say? you just are so wonderful. we can listen to you all day. >> thank you. >> now we can listen more with some of the audience's questions. now, you did give us some clues, but the audience member wants to know, what drew you to write about lyndon johnson? >> what drew me to write about lyndon johnson? >> yes. >> so, well, you know, everything, when you talk about it, it sounds like you have this plan, and everything was rational. i can't really say that that's true. what actually happened was in order to get enough money to right the power broker, i had a two-book contract, one for robert moses and one for a biography of laguardia. i didn't want to do the laguardia biography. one thing i can't stand is to do something i have done before, and i had already written about new york in the 1940s. but what i realized was i realized that only when i started that what the power broker was about or what i, hopefully, think it's about wasn't just about the life of a man, but the life of how power works in cities. how urban political power works. not what we're taught in textbooks, but how it really works. and what i wanted to do next, really wanted to do, was national political power. and the perfect guy to do that, i thought, was lyndon johnson, because he understood power, national power probably better than anybody else since roosevelt. but i thought that my publisher would never let me get out of the laguardia contract, so i started writing, and i really hated doing it. one day i got a call from my publisher, my editor, and he says, now, bob, we all know your famous temper. i don't really have a bad temper. he said -- i hope no one from my family is here. he says, but i want you to promise me you won't lose your temper. i have something i want to suggest to you and i want you to promise me you won't lose your temper until i finish. so i drove in and my editor said, now, i know you are in love with this laguardia biography, but i think you should do a biography of lyndon johnson. and i always thought i increased my advance by a lot by saying, well, i'll think about that. [ laughter ] >> okay. then the next step, how do you start an interview, and how do you keep them talking? >> oh, well, i actually try to start interviews in what i think -- i always try to start it by going chronologically. you know, what were you doing at the time i'm interested in, you know, that sort of thing. how do you keep them talking? i don't know. you always, you know, another thing alan said to he moorks i once came back from i don't know interview without the information that he wanted and i remember he said to me, i can't imitate his accent, his voice. he said, listen, kid. he said, you're not there to let them tell you what he wants to tell you. you are there to find out what he doesn't want to tell you. so you sit there and you try to find some way of getting them to keep talking. >> well, you have done a very good job, robert robert caro. >> sometimes. >> okay. if you were given the opportunity to write a biography series on another historic figure, who would he she, and nowadays or they be? >> listen, i am very bad on pronouns. can i stick to he or she? >> yes. >> well, you know, the truth is, if i had my choice, i've always wanted to do a biography of al smith. a figure whose really forgotten by history, partly because there is no good buyography of him. i learned about him because he was the man who raised robert moses to power. you know, when moses was 30 years old, he was out of work. he was standing on a line outside of city hall in cleveland, ohio, trying to get a job. and al smith saw something in him and raised him to power. al smith fascinates me. franklin roosevelt once said to frances perkins, you know, francis, 90% of everything that we have done in the new deal, al smith did first in new york. he was a tammany henchman. when he becomes governor, he says to these bosses, you have to free me now to let me do something for our people. and he passes a so much of what we come to accept today, pensions, disability, benefits, unemployment compensation, al smith started in new york. i would love to do a book on him. but i may not get to do it. >> and then again you might. and how do you consume current news? are there certain periodicals you gravitate towards? do you watch the major networks -- news networks? news. that's what the word was. news networks. >> i watch the pbs news hour. i am not sure -- i don't watch much of the cnn or msnbc. mainly because i'm writing all day, and the last thing you want to do when you come home is get some more facts put into your head. i don't consume cnn. you know, i don't watch the 24-hour cycle. >> and do you sleep at night? >> well, this is getting more and more personal. i don't sleep all that much, as it happens. i have never slept all that. . it was interesting. we were talking at bill clinton -- bill clinton talks about we spent part of the time talking about how little we both sleep. i just -- i don't sleep a lot. >> well, while you're up thinking -- >> i didn't is say he was up thinking. what i said was i was up trying to go back to sleep. >> okay. well, while you're up, have you formed an opinion or might you form an opinion about what would have become vietnam had jfk lived? >> i am sorry. i didn't hear the end of that. >> what do you think might have happened to vietnam had jfk lived? >> that's a great question. and i have to say i'm working on that right now, and i try never to talk about something that i haven't finished writing yet because i found when i do that, i sort of -- it doesn't come out as good in the writing. i talk it all out of myself. so could i take a pass on that question? >> yes. >> thank you. >> okay. i'm trying to find the best last question here. well, here's one. did you ever leave something out, and i guess not, but we're going to ask the question, to protect a source? is there anything you would now want to add back? >> no, i don't think -- that's covers a lot of decades. off the top of my head, no, i don't think -- i think -- i think the answer is probably no to that specific, you know, question. i tell people when i start interviewing them, you know, i try to say something that says, you know, i'm doing this for a book. so we both know i am going to write it down. you know, bob woodward, one of the great interviewers is here today. he does more on current things. part of what makes my job easier than his he, is that my people die off, you know? sometimes long before, you know, i have interviewed people back in the 1980s, '90s, now i'm writing about what they told me in the 2020s. so it doesn't come up that much. >> okay. that's good. >> i'm trying to think. i may be overlooking something off the top of my head. i can't think. >> let's leave them with this question. what advice would you give students in the writing and thinking process? >> aside from turn every page? >> well, thank you again. did you want to say something? >> no. >> okay. we want to thank you again so very much. and all the panelists today. and everyone for joining us on zoom, in person, and bob robert caro's books are signed in the museum store as well.caro's books are signed in the museum store as well. thank you again. we hope to see you soon. thank you. [ applause ] and you can watch the entire robert caro symposium online any time at c-span.org/history. every saturday on c-span 2 american history tv features lectures from professors across the country. recently john pitney taught a class on presidential speeches and public opinions from the 1970s through the 1990s and how presidential communication shifted from network television to cable and the internet. >> and this was very controversial at the time. many people wanted to have closer relations with the soviet union and the perception was by using the term evil, we would be provoking the soviet union. and some of you may have seen the clip i showed from the television series "the americans" where the two characters who are kgb spies are shocked to see reagan talking this way. within the soviet ranks there was a great deal of shock about reagan. now, how much did reagan's policies have to do with the fall of the soviet union? well, that's quite a debate. some would argue that at most reagan's policies were peripheral. the soviet union collapsed because of internal reasons. others would say that the soviet union fell because reagan gave them a push. you decide. you read the evidence. i'm sure this will come up in a lot of your courses in international relations. important thing, again, is what he was using the speech for. this is a case of a presidential speech having multiple audiences. obviously, his immediate audience was the national association of evangelicals. more broadly, it was religious people in the united states, evangelicals in general, who whom he wanted to mobilize on behalf of his causes. but when the president speaks, the world listens. people all over the world knew that he had referred to the soviet union as an evil empire. this was of some concern in moscow, to put it mildly, but word reached places like warsaw and there were people who took inspiration from these words. so for some people it was inspirational, for other people it was con confrontational and alarmist. >> it's available to watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. c-span offers a variety of podcasts that have something for every listener. weekdays washington today gives you the latest from the nation's capital. and every week book notes plus has in-depth interviews with writers about their later works. the weekly uses audio from our archive to look how issues of the day developed over years. and our occasional series talking with features extensive conversations with historians about their lives and work. many of our television programs are also available as podcasts. you can find them all on the c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts