Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Books by Robert Caro
Robert Caro has published six books in over fifty years, which sounds like a slow output until you understand his method: seven years of interviews and archival research for a single book on Robert Moses, three years living in the Texas Hill Country to understand Lyndon Johnson’s childhood, and a fifth Johnson volume he’s still writing decades after starting the project. Caro doesn’t write quickly, and he doesn’t write about many things — he writes about power, exhaustively, until there’s nothing left to say. Below is his complete bibliography, in order.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 books · 1974–2019 · Updated July 2026
Where to start
His most acclaimed standalone book
The Power Broker (1974) — a self-contained Pulitzer winner that doesn’t require reading anything else first.
If you want the Johnson series
The Path to Power (1982) — start at volume one; this is a series meant to be read in order.
1974
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New YorkStart here
A 1,200-page biography of urban planner Robert Moses, built from seven years of interviews and previously sealed files, tracing how one unelected official reshaped New York City for half a century. It won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and was later selected by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century.
1982
The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 1
The first volume of Caro’s planned five-part Johnson biography covers his subject’s life up to his failed 1941 Senate campaign, built partly from the three years Caro and his wife spent living in the Texas Hill Country where Johnson grew up. It won the 1982 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
1990
Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 2
Picking up after Johnson’s 1941 defeat, this volume covers his return to Congress and his disputed 1948 Senate election, including Caro’s own investigation into the contested vote count. It won the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.
2002
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3
Widely considered the high point of the series, this volume covers Johnson’s twelve years in the Senate, from 1949 to 1960, and includes an extended history of the institution itself before tracing how Johnson came to dominate it. It won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2002 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
2012
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 4
Covering 1958 to 1964, this volume follows Johnson from the height of his Senate power through the powerlessness of the vice presidency to his sudden ascent to the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination. It won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.
2019
Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing
A collection of personal pieces in which Caro reflects on his research methods for the first time, including his editor Robert Gottlieb’s famous instruction to “turn every page,” and the decades of archival immersion behind his other books.
Forthcoming Caro is currently writing the fifth and final volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which will cover Johnson’s presidency and complete a series he began nearly fifty years ago. No publication date has been announced.
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