[applause] if you are not yet on the email list, signup. We just added senator amy so now for tonight, were it was unforgetting. Bobs story about the genius of the political like his subject, caro has no peer. Over the years bob has spoiled us with his portraits of robert moses and Lyndon Johnson and treated us to slight left turns in the narrative, his diversions into fascinating bystanders, they might form the basis of future studies in and of themself. So consider his new book, working, as a companion piece to his great moses and johnson books, and today in 2019 is more resonant than ever about power used for good and power used against the greater good. As the book answers core questions, it raises more, as caro gives us deep background into the ways and whys he does what he does with such graceful shorthand. Asra if his books werent physil and intellectual evidence enough about why he takes so long to crank out the next volume, caro gives us the background on the reasons he goes through every sheet of paper in every file to get to truth that essence of political power. Its conan who possesses a lot of media power. His late night comedy beats to its own drum, and he is, without question, respected as one of the funniest guys on the planet. If that werent enough, hes also an armchair president ial scholar and, therefore, an achinglypr ardent caro devotee. Team caro centre greats, and heres sent regrets. Finish heres a guy who calls the johnson series our harry potter [laughter] heres a guy who offers national air time to authors, and they say no. So then i read a great piece in the New York Times not too long ago which reiterated conans lingering sadness that caro is the one who got away. Anuntil tonight, everybody. [applause] so heres whats going to happen. Conan and bob chat, and when theyre through, feel free to ask very, very brief questions, like one sentence. There are mics that will be in the aisles, and afterwards bob will sign copies of working and one copy of another book of his. But to get that other book signed, you have to have a copy of working. If you havent purchased working already, i dont know why you havent, do it tonight. You know that he doesnt come to l. A. Often for book signings. Remember the last time he visited or Writers Block was in 2002, 17 years ago, so dont wait another 17 years. I know all of you want to get pictures of conan and bob together, buton we want you to t your cell phones away and enjoy the program. So when i bring these two great guys out, i want you to stand up and if take pictures and take pictures. For 30 seconds, you can take all the pictures you want, and then you put your phones away. [applause] so it is, it is such a great pleasure to introduce bob caro and conan obrien. [cheers and applause] this is an absolute thrill for me. It is no secret, mr. Caro, that i have pursued you. You have been my white whale. I think the New York Times referred to you as you were the white wail to my ahab [laughter] whale. And tonight i have cornered you, and there is no getting away, and this is the thrill of a lifetime. Thank you so much for sitting down with me, really. [applause] it didnt take any cornering. I read the wonderful story about you started reading my books in college instead of going to Fort Lauderdale and getting hammered [laughter] this is what i did. [laughter] i skipped spring break, and my roommate and i read, yes, the path to power and didnt go to spring break. And then backstage you told me, you idiot, i went to spring break. [laughter] i also want to thank you for finally, mr. Caro, writing a book that will fit on my night table, thank you. [laughter] there is so much to talk about. I am going to start, though, with one demand. I am the moderator tonight, and i am going to make a strict and simple demand. I will allow any question after im done interviewing mr. Caro except one. Tonight no one is allowed to is ask this man when is the next Lyndon Johnson book coming out. I forbid that question. [laughter] i forbid it. People are constantly bothering this man [laughter] when is that book going to come out, and i find it rude, and i talked to a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, and he said, well, youre going to be speaking at a temple, is so you should use the phrase [speaking in native tongue] [laughter] it means it would have been enough. And i maintain that when people bother mr. Craro caro about when is the next book going to come out, my answer is had he just written the power broker, it would have been enough. [applause] had he just written path to power, it would have been enough. Had he written any single one of thesehe book withs interspeak speak we will get it when hes damn ready to give it to us, and were cool with that. Are you cool with that . Yes. [laughter] will have. Im just going to talk. Im not going to let you talk at all. [laughter] i finally got you, and im not going to let you speak. Ive never killed in a synagogue like this, this is amazing. Img, really doing well. [laughter] mr. Caro, i love the book, working, and ill tell why ill tell you why i have read all of your book and im a fan, and i knew you were thorough as a researcher and a writer, but i had no idea until i read this book that you were that i could use so many words dedicated, compulsive, committed. You have a grade that you were taught very early, and id like you to talk about it a little bit at the top. I think it was Alan Hathaway at newsday, one of your first jobs, told you when youre doing research, turn every page. Right. Turn every page. You took it literally, and youve taken it further than any biographer in the history of the written world. Tell us about that. Well, i was a young reporter at newsday still doing very unshort stories, and through an accident i got thrown into an investigative, had to go down and go through a bunch of files in a federal agency. And i came back and wrote a memo for the real reporters who would write the story the next day. And we had a managing editor, thee Alan Hathaway, who was an old guy from the 1920s. He was a guy with a big head, just a fringe of hair around the back. The head was very red because he started drinking very early in the day [laughter] wert never even, we never knew that alan, whether alan graduated from college or even went to college, but he really had a prejudice against people from prestigious universities. I went to princeton. And they hired me while he was on vacation as a joke on him. [laughter] so he would walk by my desk every day on the way to his office, and he never talked to me. And id say good morning, mr. Hathaway, or hi, alan, whatever. Hed never even answer me. So this one day i had to go to alan because everyone else was actually on a picnic, and no one could be reached because they didnt have cell phones. And i wroted a long memo. And the next morning very early his is secretary called me and said alan wants to see you right away. And i said, you see, i was right not to move. Im about to be fired. And all the way in to office i was sure i was going to be fired. I got and his secretary, june, said to me go in. So i walked across he had a glassenclosed office, and i could see this big red head bent over reading something very intently. And as i got to his door, i saw it was my memo that he was reading. And he waved me to a chair, and after a while he looked up and he said i didnt know someone from princeton could do, go through files like this. From now on you do investigative work. Well, i have great savoirfaire at moments like this, and what i said to him was, but i dont know anything about investigative work. [laughter] and he looked up at me, for what i remember as a very long time, reand said just remember one thing turn every page. Never assume anything. Turnrn every god damn page. And i cant tell you how many times in my life that stuck with me and really resulted in me finding manager. There are so many times, and you say it in the book, where you are, you are maybe a document away from this great discovery, and youre in these massive rooms, rooms this size filled with documents, and you dont think youre going to find anything. And you its the next box, and you think this is a waste of time, and you do it anyway, and thats where you find the document that blows everything apart. Thats happened a number of times. Young know, it happened i hae to tell one example of it. So when i was doing Lyndon Johnson, he comes to congress at thee age of 29 in 1937, and im going through the you cant go through every page in the Johnson Library, there are millions of pages. But i said i really want to paint a picture of what a young congressmans life was like in the first years. So i said aisle do everything ill do every page in this 10 or boxes. And im going through these things, very innocuous letters. And youre thinking, as you always think, yeah, im wasting another month of myyo life, you know . And all of a sudden, i noticed there was a change. At a certain point, and the point was october 1940, before that he had been the junior congressman writingng to senior congressmen, Committee Chairmen or whatever saying can i have five minutes of your time, that tone. After that, after election day november 5th, 1940, all of a sudden a lot of the letters from Committee Chairmen to this junior congressman were, lyndon, can i have five minutes of your time. So i was then interviewing an old i dont think anyone here is old enough to remember an Old Washington [inaudible] named tommy. I said to him, so what happened in october 1940 . And he said money, kid. He used to call me kid. Money, kid, money. But he said youre never going to be able to write about that, kid. Iu said, why not . He said, because lyndon never put anything in writing. But im going through these things, and im going through one innocuous letter after another, and all of a sudden the next document is this faded Western Union telegraph form from octoberes 19th, 1940. Its from george brown of brown and root which is the texas firm which really is financing Lyndon Johnson, and he is getting them increasingly big federal contracts. And the telegram says, lyndon, the checks are on the way. And lyndon replied himself on the bottom of it in writing, im not mentioning, im not responding to these people or telling anyone about them, so you thankle them. The six names were in there, and because they were there, i could course reference to their letter ands find out who they were. And then i keep well, as that happens you say, well, you know, im going to keep going. And i found another thing which, to me, is one of the most remarkable documents i ever came across. Its typed, its six pages long, and both of johnsons assistants John Connolly, who was hater the secretary of treasury, and walter [inaudible] they both told me that lyndon, that they had typed it. But whoever typed it, this is what it was. Isthere were two typed columns. In the lefthand column theres the name of the [inaudible] in the Center Column theres how much money he wants and what he needs it for. Thee amounts are so small, its really almost by todays standards, yeah. Yeah. Its like need 450 for last minute advertising. Theyre trying to steal it at the polls like today, by the way. But anyway, go ahead. [laughter] sorry. Needs 600. But in the lefthand column in Lyndon Johnsons own handwriting, he wrote if he was going to give the person the full amount of money that the person asked for, he wrote okay. If hes going to give him part of the money hed question with the oak and the amount okay and the amount. 300, 500. But for some of them he wrote none. And for some of them he wrote none, out. So i asked John Connolly what did it mean when Lyndon Johnson wrote none, out, and i can still remember his taupe, that guy was never going to get any money from Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon johnson never forgot and he never forgave. So in this one month, somehow congress became aware that if you wanted money from texas, you had to go through this junior congressman. And all of a sudden he was on this roadat to National Power. Finish. You know, whats fascinating to me is the tenacity there to touch every document, to turn it over, to Read Everything even if you have to go through 5,000 boxes, youre going to go through all 5,000 boxes just in case. The flipside of that, which i think is completely unprecedented, is yousi have you need to have a sense of place. Ic you, robert caro, need to have a sense of place when you are writing about these people, these men, these powerful men. So you decided when you were writing about Lyndon Johnson that you couldnt write about him unless you lived in the hill country. Yes. You wentou and you lived the. Yes. And we need to give a shoutout right now to your incredible wife,ou who i think s here tonight, ines is here ms. [applause] there she is. Stand up. [applause] you said e to your wife, we need to move to the hill country in texas and live there for possibly a year or two in order for me to really write about Lyndon Johnson. And she gave a very different answer from what my wife, whos also heress tonight, would say. [laughter] vshe said, lets go. And that is absolutely incredible. Thats not what she said. [laughter] he said why cant you write a biography of napoleon . [laughter] but she moved to the hill cup, country, and it worked because there were a lot of people who were reticent. They werent talking to you, but once you and ina were living there, you could understand. You could understand the people, and they grew to accept you, and people started to talk about Lyndon Johnson who would not have spoke to you before. Who didnt speak. You know, i tried i always think you are the best interviewer, but i always thought i was a good interviewer. The people i couldnt get to talk to me were the people of the hill country. There was a lone hill country starts started then at the western edge and went on for 300 miles. And there were hardly any people there. Youd get directions to interview people, and theyd Say Something like you drive 47 miles out of austin, and watch for the cattle guard and then you turn left. And you might go 30 miles on this rugged, unpaved road. And at the end of it would be a house. And you suddenly realized, i havent passed a house in 30 miles. These people were so lonely, and theyey just werent used to talking to people. And what you said before was such a perceptive remark, they believed it was wrong to say anything derogatory about the man who became president of the United States even if they didnt like him or had grown up with him, they thought it was unpatriotic, the man had become president , you dont say bad things about the president. Man, have times changeed. [laughter] you theres a really strikig moment where one of hardship done von ops Lyndon Johnsons relatives, its so pivotal in his life, his father was his idol s and then his father had a ranch and it failed, and the family became a laughingstock. And you were trying to understand that failure. And one of the relatives made you kneel down and put your hands in the soiling of that ranch soil of that ranch, and you realized it was only soil for about an inch or two, and then it was rock. Exactly the right things out of this book, because his father didnt get it looked so beautiful when he had come to the ranch. Its covered with grass and all. But as soon as you there was so little soil on top of the rock that as soon as you tried to do anything with it, to grow cotton or raise cattle, the grass was eaten down and washed away. And i didnt realize this. I sort of thought lyndons father was this wonderful legislator, was a wonderful man. And lyndons favorite cousin, aver, really didnt like him. The way i talked about johnson. So she took me out, she said, now get out of the car. This is just the thing you just described. She said, now kneel down and stick your fingers into the ground. And it looked so beautiful. And just what you said, i couldnt even get the length of my fingers into the ground. And because lyndon john zunes father didnt realize this and made this one mistake, the family was ruined. They were ruined, he was humiliated, and so then theres this change in leadership Lyndon Johnson and this real bitterness and the problem between the father and the son. Now, any other biographer would say, all right, im getting a few accounts here and there of trouble between the father and the son. You really wanted to you said it, and you did to understand it, and you did something i didnt understand, you went to Lyndon Johnsons brother sam, and you wanted sam to get you back to the moment. You wanted to understand what it was line, hawaiian done sitting with his lyndon sitting with his father during that period of disillusionment. You did a thing what i think an acting teacher might do. Its very unusual. You took sam to the house, and had him sit at the table. The house was, obviously recreated. Recreated. You sat behind him where he couldnt see you, and and you prodded him over and over and over again in a really intense way to remember what it was like. And then suddenly he did, and he started talking. And so could you talk about those conversations he remembered . Well, you know, because he had yes. Can i say you can say whatever you want, its your show. [laughter] when i started, of course, one of the first people i went to see was sam, his name was sam houston johnson. He was lyndons little brother. And he had a reputation as being a very heavy drinker and being a guy full of bravado and brag doe show, and i found that that was true. And most of the stuff he told me, he told me these wonderful stories, but when you checked them out, they were untrue. So i said ive wasted enough time with him, im not going to talk to him anymore. So in the interim, the next year or so, i heard he had a terrible operation for cancer and that he hadnt stopped drinking. And oneib day im Walking Around johnson city because i used to do that a lot, just walk around this little town trying to get to know the people. And there he was coming toward