The Years of Robert Caro
One of the joys of magazines is the variety they provide. They are like old radio stations, where you can flip through channels to listen to a particular flavor of music, but are also limited to the music they play. Once and a while, a favorite band plays a new song, and it is exciting. That’s how I feel about the magazines I read. Every now and then, a writer will come out with a new piece—John McPhee in the New Yorker, for instance. Or there will be an article that is right up my alley, that pushes all the right buttons.
This happened recently when the March 2025 issue of Smithsonian arrived in my mailbox. The first thing I do when I get a new issue of a magazine is scan the table of contents1 to see if there is anything of particular interest. That is how I discovered the feature article by Chris Heath, “The Years of Robert Caro2.”
I’ve read all of Robert A3. Caro’s books to date. I’ve read The Power Broker, which was fascinating, but which I had to take breaks on because Robert Moses angered me so much. I’ve read the first four volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and like many Caro fans, am eagerly awaiting (with fingers crossed) the final volume. I’ve also read his book Working. Indeed, I have a signed copy of the book.
My signed copy of Working by Robert A. Caro.Heath’s article comes in the context of a permanent exhibit from Caro’s archive established at the New York Historical Society, which has changed its name to New York Historical, something that reads like a typo to me. The article was a profile of Caro and his work and focused on his writing and his writing habits, as well as his research and attention to detail. It was a wonderful, delightful read, one of those rare reads that I save for a time when I can go through the entire thing in a single sitting.
If you are a fan of Caro, I highly recommend Heath’s piece.
WIRED magazine annoys me in this regard because their table of contents, for feature articles is displayed along the bottom of a page and it makes it hard to find.
︎It also annoys me that the print edition of the magazine uses a different title from the online version of the magazine. I’ve written about this before. It might be good for clicks, but it creates unnecessary confusion. ︎Each time I’ve started typing out “Robert A. Caro,” I’ve instead typed “Robert A. Heinlein.” ︎Did you enjoy this post?
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