Robert Caro Has Another Book Idea

This author and researcher is utterly amazing.

While working on the fifth volume of his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro — famous both for the size of his books and how long it takes him to write them — is immersed in another project, too. The new book is not a memoir, exactly, he said in a telephone interview from his summer home on Long Island, but an account of how he came to write the Johnson biography and its predecessor, “The Power Broker,” a biography of the developer and city planner Robert Moses.

The tone, he said, Is similar to that of his 1998 New Yorker article describing the origins of “The Power Broker,” his interviews with Moses and the obstacles he faced. Mr. Caro added that he has an “understanding” about the new book with his publisher, Knopf, but no official contract and there is no scheduled publication date.

“It will be done when it’s done,” he said, and not until he finishes with Johnson. He added, “It’s getting pretty long already.”