... indispensable ... Through its mix of previously published personal essays, cohesively edited together with new reflections and insights, Working becomes an invaluable how-to for aspiring nonfiction writers and journalists. It’s an intimate glimpse into the anxieties and painstaking sacrifices that go into the ridiculously in-depth reporting Caro has made his name on ... The research is the backbone of his books, as it would be for any historian. But the key to Caro’s success rests in his ability to bring alive the people who witnessed or were transformed by the political power he’s trying to describe ... That’s the ultimate charm of Working: it’s a reminder that we should care less about whether or not the work gets finished, and more for everything Caro has given us so far.
Working is an inspiring — and reading it as a journalist, honestly sometimes shame-inducing — window into the seemingly superhuman reporting, researching, writing, patience, and above all, will-power that have powered his reinvention of the political biography and history genre ... Even if he or she isn't planning on spending decades turning over every single detail of a subject's life, a reporter, author, or researcher will come away from this book armed with several new approaches to fact-finding and writing ... Robert Caro's chapters are unique. Often appearing to veer wildly off the course of his books' primary topics, they function as mini-biographies of well-known political figures.
...this assemblage of personal reflections and interviews may give the true Caro completist a creeping sense of déjà vu ... the book reads as if it were designed to divert as little of his time as possible ... Small and charming at about 200 pages, a quick spritz instead of a deep dive, Working is like the antithesis of Caro’s labor-intensive oeuvre, making it strangely reassuring proof that he is, well, working ... There are a number of anecdotes in Working that Caro has shared before — after all, his books are so comprehensive that it only makes sense ... For someone so interested in the power of others, Caro seems coy about his own power to shape legacies. The writer who emerges from these pages is so humble.
... compelling but uncharacteristic ... a feast — the only low-cal feast delivered from that venerable and venerated Smith Corona in years — for anyone interested in reading, and in writing ... This book will, alternately, terrify, humble and inspire writers. Everyone looks for shortcuts. Caro deplores them. No one likes to do multiple drafts; Caro is addicted to them ... This brisk volume might be regarded as the path to writing with power.
For anyone who has ever tried to write a book, Caro’s love song to research is immediately recognizable ... Caro’s excitement when recounting his best detective work...is palpable and contagious ... Just as Caro’s implicit theory of political power seems to belong to a mid-century world, the picture he paints of his own immersion in his work as simply a facet of his tenacious character also seems to belong to an earlier moment. Even if Caro feels that he had no choice but to keep researching and writing as though time were no consideration, the fact is that other people facilitated all of this ... The question of what relationships might sustain intellectual work—what might make the commitment Caro has demonstrated more widely available—is unfortunately never taken up in Working. And this is what makes the book seem less generous than it might be; its anecdotes and reflections not so much inspiration for others, but an exercise in self-celebration ... It is hard to avoid the sense, at the end of Working, that it may even involve a certain kind of power—although of a very different sort than the power he has spent his life so adeptly trying to unravel. In the end, as he himself would probably agree, memoir isn’t adequate to understanding a life; Robert Caro may have to wait for his own biographer as well.
In the course of explaining his reporting and writing process—which involves many longhand drafts and a typewriter—he also charts his own extraordinary life ... The most delicious parts of Working are behind-the-scenes snippets from interviews he conducted with associates of the president ... Fellow journalists will delight in [Caro's] intrepid shoe-leather escapades.
Devoted fans of two-time Pulitzer Prize biographer Robert Caro will find a lot to dislike about his new book ... time away from delivering the coda to his LBJ bio ... the book’s length ... that much of Working is familiar ... But there’s also newly written material, and it’s priceless. Legendary for his relentless research and bloodhound-like tracking of elusive facts, Caro explains how he does it ... Caro’s enthusiasm and his insights into his craft make Working fascinating and inspiring, even for those who’ve heard it all before. It’s a master class in research, reporting and writing.
... relevant to today’s readers. It’s worth remembering that speed, access, and space restrictions have always been barriers to good reporting, even if the technology is new. And Caro’s new book is a helpful guide, as one man’s attempt to deal with those limitations ... deceptively modern ... Since much of Working has been previously published over the last 25 years, the book gives a sense of how coverage of those subjects has evolved over time ... The focus on Johnson as an individual reveals a lot about Caro as a storyteller.
Some [of Caro's meditations are] drawn from his experiences writing about Robert Moses and Johnson, some freshly minted, some culled from earlier interviews. Inevitably, with selections, there are repetitions and occasional lapses of style: Before we have warmed up, there’s a head-spinning single sentence of almost 170 words. And yet Caro’s squib about working is iridescent, so many brilliant refractions of light from his hard slog of discovering what life has really meant for the people in his narratives, the powerful and the powerless.
... hangs together because Caro’s casual, often self-deprecating voice remains constant, whether he’s talking directly to us or via an interviewer from The Paris Review. It’s the moments of both anxiety and discovery that make Working worth it ... Reading this, you might think Working is only for writers. It’s a worthwhile read, though, for anyone whose life’s mission could benefit from a lesson in thoroughness, patience and perseverance.
The author’s subject is not great men; it is political power. Caro is not a hagiographer or hero-worshipper. He is interested in understanding how power really works, not in theory but in practice ... Some of the material has been published before; some of it is new. The book is an insurance policy, or safe deposit box, against the march of time ... The tone is companionable, teaching, if at all, by example ... not a distillation of advice to aspiring biographers ... Caro is at his most didactic on the importance of fine writing in non-fiction.
Caro sees his books less as biographies of great men than studies in political power — how it is obtained, how it is used, and how it affects everyday people. The stories he tells are not always flattering to his subjects ... Given Caro’s thoroughness and his willingness to explore his subjects’ flaws, his approach to covering LBJ’s extramarital relationships, which he addresses in a chapter recently excerpted in The New Yorker, comes as somewhat surprising ... it’s disappointing that Caro largely ignores how Johnson abused his power to prey upon his female subordinates. This is precisely the kind of misconduct that the #MeToo movement has exposed as traumatic. This conspicuously stubborn blind spot tarnishes an otherwise exemplary approach to biography.
Anyone trying to write in any form will devour it ... History, [Caro] believes, should use the same literary tricks and devices you find in great novels and poetry. 'Rhythm matters,' he writes. 'Mood matters. Sense of place matters.' Working, blessedly short by Caro’s usual standards, tells you how the best of it gets done.
... reads like an extended interview ... Caro tells his story of work beyond the nine to five, the paying of rent and career advancement, a story of work that matters.
[Caro] shares tips on researching, interviewing and writing, showcased in wonderful, revealing, often funny anecdotes ... a slender volume, but its real theme goes far beyond authorial tradecraft. Caro’s own life has been an epic of human endeavor, a tale of obsession ... Caro, the memoirist, is unforthcoming. In part, he is an old-school newspaperman who dislikes employing the first-person pronoun.
... a quick but insightful primer on how to write biography ... Two characteristics emerge from Caro’s commentary: persistence and meticulousness ... Caro is definitely old school, but as all writers will attest, it’s important to adhere to what works for them. And whether writers themselves or not, readers who appreciate fact-based narrative writing and its role as a teaching tool will find Working to be a gem.
Working is full of exemplary tales showing Mr. Caro putting the Blackmur-Hathway credo into practice ... [Caro's] masterstroke is the last of a series of interviews with LBJ’s younger brother, Sam Houston Johnson, an alcoholic fabulist who had spun family legends to the author.
Working is not a fully fledged memoir. Rather it’s a collection of pieces, some previously published and some newly written, about how he works and what drives him. As such, it complements and enriches our understanding of his life’s work ... Endless research is only the start. What makes his books so remarkable is Caro’s polished and repolished literary style. Writing was easy. What mattered was thinking carefully about every phrase, every word.
... a slim volume, but when readers come to the end, they might wish it had gone on as long as the colossal masterworks for which the historian is celebrated ... delightful ... While stories of Caro’s investigative achievements are astonishing, the nuts-and-bolts details of his research and writing process are charming ... The humility, the tenacity, the ardent desire to make his readers truly understand a subject, the decades spent taking care to produce something masterful and meaningful—all of it stands in stark contrast to the more punishing aspects of our information cycle. We might not deserve Robert Caro, but we’re certainly lucky to have him.
... like a restaurant behind on its orders sending out an amuse-bouche to appease hungry diners, Caro is throwing us all a few bones ... What I found most gratifying about Working was an insight into why I, and so many others, so enjoy, even crave, reading Caro’s books. Part of it is the pleasure in what he has discovered, reaping the fruits of his sheer doggedness as a researcher ... In comparison to our age of frictionless composition and communication, Caro’s writing feels as though he is scrivening his words onto the page. He doesn’t fetishize the internet; his writing is impossible to tweet. He talks about sitting in a room with a box of papers and turning every page. To borrow the title of Irving Howe’s most famous book, he is a living monument to the world of our fathers.
...a new, surprisingly snackable memoir of Caro’s writing life ... the book proves quite successful in explaining his methods. A judiciously chosen and impeccably sequenced collection of essays and interviews, Working offers generous insights into Caro’s investigative and creative process ... Ultimately, Working is a collection of stories, from Caro’s riveting account of his bracing interviews with Robert Moses after the wary master builder finally realized his would-be biographer wasn’t going away, to his stranger-than-fiction description of how he finally, definitively answered the question of whether Lyndon Johnson stole his first senate election ... Perhaps most rewardingly and unexpectedly, Working is a book about what makes great writing.
While offering bountiful advice, Caro’s succession of colorful anecdotes keeps the memoir breezy and accessible. His masterful storytelling oozes out of every page, transforming seemingly mundane topics—combing through archives or traversing the barren hill country of Johnson’s youth, for instance—into stirring dramas ... [Caro's] persistence jumps from nearly every page ... For anyone who reads this virtuoso expound upon his craft, Working will be worth the extra wait.
Working is a brief and refreshing interlude from the painstakingly detailed life portraits that have become Caro’s trademark. While featuring some previously published material, it offers readers a contextual view of what his writing seeks to accomplish and why he writes with the vivid and glorious detail that makes his books essential to an understanding of the life and times of his subjects ... Although only 200 pages, Working offers significant insights into how a biographer treats his subjects and his craft.
Caro doesn’t psychoanalyze or generalize—he is the antitheoretical reporter, the full empiricist ... For all of the misery that Moses and Johnson caused, Caro never busts out the gavel, and continues to give his subjects credit where he thinks it is due ... Caro is relentless, though, in documenting the pain of the people Moses dispossessed, with apparently no regret, when executing his plans ... Caro has a faith in reporting that is mirrored by cinema verité filmmakers ... It’s narrative without voice-over, in spirit. Caro is, of course, the narrator, but without an impulse to explain. The most thrilling sections here are like policiers, Caro pulling on threads till the perps show their hand ... The Caro fan wishes there were five hundred pages of these stories, not two hundred. Others might wish, despite the legendary and unimpeachable nature of Caro’s books, that he had ventured beyond his two subjects. Caro has been working on the LBJ series for most of my adult life, and I’m torn between total admiration and a slightly irrational frustration. Aren’t there other figures of power who need their pages turned? Did Caro have to take his talents to Texas?
This engrossing and unexpectedly moving essay collection fully illuminates why and how [Caro] has spent so many years working on his massive, contextually intricate, and courageous biographies of two towering figures ... In humorous, rueful, often flat-out astonishing anecdotes, he recounts his early newspaper days and the sense of mission that drove him, with the unshakable support of his historian wife and investigative partner, Ina ... As he elucidates his commitment to creating biographical history of conscience and resonance, Caro affirms the larger significance of factual precision, empathy, and expressive verve.
In sparkling prose, Caro...recounts his path from growing up sheltered in New York City to studying at Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia to unexpectedly becoming a newspaper reporter ... Throughout the book, the author shares fascinating insights into his research process in archives ... Caro also offers numerous memorable anecdotes ... Caro’s skill as a biographer, master of compelling prose, appealing self-deprecation, and overall generous spirit shine through on every page.
In this superb collection of original and previously published pieces, Pulitzer winner Caro (The Passage of Power) offers a glimpse into the process behind his epic biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. Writing with customary humor, grace, and vigor, Caro wryly acknowledges the question of 'Why does it take so long' to produce each book ... this lively combination of memoir and non-fiction writing will help sate their appetite for new writing from Caro until the arrival of his final, still-in-progress Johnson biography.
