I'm Gilbert Cruz, the new editor of the book's desk, and for the next many months we'll

be highlighting great author interviews from our substantial archive.

This week, we're featuring a fascinating conversation with Robert Carro, the Pulitzer

Prize-winning biographer of Lyndon Johnson.

Pamela Paul, the former editor of the book review, spoke with Carro in April 2019 upon

the publication of Working, in which he gave readers behind the scenes accounts of how

he puts together his deeply reported books.

Robert Carro joins us now.

Bob, thanks so much for being here.

Pleasure to be here.

All right, so everyone has been greatly anticipating volume five of the years of Johnson, but

instead you have written this other book, Working, Researching, Interviewing, Writing.

Why did you decide to do this?

Ever since the power broker, I kept myself out of the book.

I don't think the word I appears in there many times.

As soon as the book came out, people started asking me what was it like to interview

Robert Moses?

And I realized that I should have put in something to tell people what that was like.

So for like 45 years, I've been hearing that question.

And people ask me what it's like to work in presidential libraries, what can you find

out from interviews?

This isn't advice to anybody, but it's sort of, I said, well, I want to give people some

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