I read this book as quickly as possible, and have since revisited it for the parts I found most interesting. Readers approach this book from one of two angles: either, they have already read Caro's big pieces like The Power Broker or The Path to Power, or want to know if they should read them. I count myself in the second category. I had heard about Caro's extreme dedication to his craft and how he had spent years on each book. Before committing to the big volumes, I thought: why not take a look at this one first?
The core idea
The core idea: Robert Caro set out to understand and educate the public on how social structures and power dynamics shape history by closely examining the lives of great men, who accomplished unprecedented feats that had never been done before. Caro details how this led him to quit his job as a journalist and become an author. What makes his work special, in my opinion, is the amount of detail he offers and the extent to which he digs into the lives of the people he studies. Dedicating seven years of work to one book is remarkable. Having a close up look at the inner workings and day-to-day life of highly successful people is very rare, but incredibly valuable. One recent public log it reminded me of is this one, between Sam Altman and Elon Musk in regards to OpenAI. How much would you pay to go through Sam Altman's phone for an hour? Related, you can learn a lot - especially tacit knowledge - from watching these people live at work.
Another part I found valuable were Caros notes on interviewing. He always tried to make his guests re-experience how some situation felt: "What did you hear? What did you see? ..." He would ask these questions up to seven times, until he got a satisfying answer. He would also use silence as a weapon: If you stay silent long enough, your guest will eventually give in and say something.
This is a great review by Dwarkesh Patel, on Caro's Lyndon Johnson biographies. One statement stands out: "If you do everything, you will win."
Dwarkesh argues, that this attitude not only describes Johnson (the subject of the biographies), but also Caro (the author).