Writing literature 'In the deepest and highest sense'

 “I am trying to make clear through my writingsomething which I believe: that biography- history in general- can beliterature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.”– Robert Caro

Caro, bornon this date in 1935, is best known for his celebrated biographies of UnitedStates political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson and as winner of the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.  Over his lifetime, Caro has won nearly every major nonfiction writing award.

A native of New York City, Carobegan his professional career as areporter with The New Brunswick (N.J.)Daily Home News, and from there he went on to six years as aninvestigative reporter with the Long Island newspaper Newsday.
While there, he wrote The Power Broker, a biography of Robert Moses, the New York metropolitan area urban planner.  It was the first of many award-winning books for Caro.  The book not only won a Pulitzer Prize and rose to the top ofmost best-seller lists, it also was chosen by the Modern Library as one of thehundred greatest nonfiction books of the 20th Century.   Among his other books since then are four of a planned fivevolumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012).
While theJohnson books also have received numerous                    accolades, it is The Power Brokerthat is widely viewed as a seminal work because it combined painstakinghistorical research with a smoothly flowing narrative writing style.  
  “I never wanted to dobiography just to tell the life of a famous man.," Caro said.  "I always wanted to use the life of a man toexamine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.”