If you are interested in reading Caro’s biographies but have been intimidated by their size, I’d recommend starting here.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 3/5
Mindset: 5/5
Some of My Highlights:
“… set myself the goal of a minimum of a thousand words a day…”
“You hear a lot about gunfights in Westerns; you don’t hear so much about hauling up the water after a perineal tear.”
“From the very start I thought of writing biographies as a means of illuminating the times of the men I was writing about and the great forces that molded those times – particularly the force that is political power.”
“Why political power? Because political power shapes all of our lives.”
“And then one day, while I was taking notes, I suddenly thought, No, that’s not why highways get built where they get built. They get built there because Robert Moses wants them there!”
“He was the greatest builder in the history of America, perhaps in the history of the world.”
“‘There was no reason for an older person to be lonely in that neighborhood,’ said one who lived there.”
“OF COURSE THERE WAS more. If you ask the right questions, there always is. That’s the problem.”