Robert Caro is Everywhere

Robert Caro is everywhere right now.

I hear him mentioned on podcasts. I see his name in William Zinsser's book Writing to Learn. 

Why is he everywhere? I might just notice him everywhere because I've been reading his books. I once started noticing Hondas when I had a Honda Accord. Now that we drive Toyotas, I see them everywhere. It could be the same with Robert Caro, but I suspect that it is his excellence. His excellence makes him relevant.

I've read four of Robert Caro's books. That is around 2500 pages. I have two more by my nightstand right now. What make Robert Caro so excellent?

First, he gets information that nobody else gets. He goes to lengths that nobody else will go to. He talks about running the route from Lyndon Johnson's apartment to the Capitol building at the exact time of day Johnson would have run it so he could see what he saw. Caro went for a season to live in Central Texas so he could understand how the people lived. He tracked down people once thought dead by using old phone books in the New York public library.

Second, Caro's writing is so good. His sentences are clear and easy to read. He never makes you stop to wonder what he's referring to. He is very careful with his words, and so the difficulty of reading his books is just the size of them not at their content. 

Third, Caro's excellence shows in the way that every book and every part of a book has a point. You could call it an angle. He doesn't just write a long book about a certain period of Lyndon Johnson's life. He writes a book about an election and uses that as a window into who Johnson was and who Johnson would become. Every chapter in The Power Broker has a theme and everything in it relates to that theme and makes sense. 

I hope Caro lives long enough to finish his Johnson series. I'm sure it will be excellent.