12 | FORBES INDONESIA JULY 2019
FACT & COMMENT
wherever he is now, shouldn’t be sit-
ting or lying on his laurels. Robert
Caro’s monumental works on the life
of Robert Moses, the man who built
virtually all of the bridges, causeways,
highways, parks and playgrounds
of 20th-century New York City and
its environs, not to mention numer-
ous impressive housing projects, and
on the life of Lyndon Johnson, our
36th President (Caro is working on
the fifth and final volume), are every
bit as impressive as what Boswell
achieved. Even more so, actually.
Of course, Caro didn’t get to spend
his days shadowing his subjects, as
Boswell did Johnson, but you would
think he had. He conducted count-
less interviews with just about anyone
who might shed light on his sub-
jects. In many cases Caro had numer-
ous conversations and held multiple
Q&A sessions with the same person.
He continuously probed at what was
actually said in particular situations,
the way in which it was said, what the
surrounding environment was, what
the moods of the persons involved
were and what was happening around
them, such as what the demonstra-
tors were chanting outside the White
House. Many a time intervieweeswould exclaim, “You al-
ready asked me that sev-
eral times before!” But
Caro knew what he was
doing as he extracted
priceless insights and in-
formation from the peo-
ple he was questioning,
who had long forgotten
or hadn’t realized the
light they could shed on
what had taken place.
Caro is stunningly
incisive regarding his
subjects’ personalities
and how they achieved
levels of political power
in a democracy that
were probably without
precedent—and what
they used that power for. That is par-
ticularly true of Robert Moses, who
was never elected to office yet was
infinitely more dominant than any
of the New York governors or NYC
mayors who held office during his 44
years as the building czar of the re-
gion. In fact, Moses was probably the
greatest builder in world history.
Certainly no other politician in
modern times has run the U.S. Senate
as effectively and productively as Lyn-
don Johnson did in the 1950s. Even
Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t match
the domestic legislative achievements
that Johnson accomplished when he
took office after the assassination of
John Kennedy and pushed through his
Great Society agenda. Only Johnson
could have gotten Congress to pass the
monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964
or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that fi-
nally gave African-Americans the fran-
chise in the South. As we await Caro’s
final volume on Johnson’s presidency,
we know he’ll clarify what Johnson
did in Vietnam and spell out the costs
of that conflict on American society,
then and to this day.
Just as impressive is the way Caro
re-creates the worlds that these two
men inhabited from the time of theirbirths until their deaths, truly “the
life and times of ” writing at its best.
But to occupy readers until the
Johnson volume is finished, Caro’s
fascinating book Working gives us in-
sight into what makes him tick and
why he chose Moses and Johnson
for study. Call this a “memoirette.”
Caro’s unrelenting pursuit of facts
and his insights will leave you in awe.
For example, he knew that Moses’ ob-
session to build highways in the Big
Apple meant the bulldozing of nu-
merous community enclaves. But how
were those displaced actually affected
by the evictions? Caro took one mile
of a partic-ular highway and tracked
down, as best he could, those who got
tossed out of their apartments or up-
rooted from their stores and places of
business to learn, firsthand, how their
lives had been impacted.
Or take the Hill Country of Texas,
an area bigger than New England,
where Johnson grew up. People there
live on isolated farms. It was a harsh
and lonely existence, and residents
weren’t in the habit of talking much to
outsiders. So Caro, along with his wife
and son, moved there for three years.
Thus, he was able to vividly paint what
life there was like and what Johnson
had actually done in his youth.
Caro has no illusions about the
nature of his subjects as he graphical-
ly chronicles their immense, undeni-
able achievements and their colossal
shortcomings. He definitely proved,
for instance, that the controversial
1948 Texas election that sent LBJ to
the U.S. Senate, which he ostensibly
won by 87 votes, was actually stolen
by ballot-box chicanery.
Yet Johnson, as a young congress-
man and against immense obsta-
cles, brought electricity to the Hill
Country. Caro vividly and movingly
describes how grinding and severe
existence, especially for women, was
before the juice came.
After reading this brief, brilliant
book, one can only say, “Wow!” F