What Never Made It Into Robert Caro's Books?

A lot of what Robert Caro researched never made it into his books. He had to cut so much from The Power Broker that he still thinks should have stayed. He gave his editor, Bob Gottlieb, a manuscript of 1,050,000 words. Caro was determined the book would be only one volume. The most that would fit, after Gottlieb worked at it, was about 700 pages, or about 700,000 words, so 350,000 words had to come out. Gottlieb has said he cut a lot of the best stuff he ever read. People still ask Caro about things he wrote, and then learn that no one ever read them.

He keeps writing what he thinks belongs even while he knows much of it will be cut. The same loss sits in the file cabinets. He has only a brief chapter on Sam Rayburn, who ran the House of Representatives and passed many of Roosevelt's bills, and there is no good biography of Rayburn. He thinks he has about 700 interviews for The Power Broker alone. More of what he learned about Lyndon Johnson's presidency, and a lot of what he learned about the Senate, is not going into the books. He will not put a percent on the Senate material.

He gave the archive to the New York Historical Society. Other places offered a lot more money. He took a great deal less, an amount that mattered to him, so the papers would be in New York and easy to reach, rather than at the University of Texas, where a reader would have to fly.