The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

But at first Caro struggled even to wrap his head around his subjects. While researching and reporting The Power Broker, he was overwhelmed by the volume of information he had collected. “It was so big, so immense,” he has said. “I couldn’t figure out what to do with the material.” Caro’s books are too colossal to be held entirely in mind—even their author’s mind. Nor is the space of a typewritten page (Caro does not use a computer) nearly big enough to contain the full sweep of his storytelling. In order to complete these massive projects, Caro has to extend his thinking into physical space. One entire wall of his office on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is taken up by a cork board four feet high and ten feet wide; the board is covered with a detailed outline of Caro’s current work in progress, plotting its trajectory from beginning to end. (So thorough is Caro that he must know the last sentence of a book before he starts composing its first lines.)