IN THE COTTAGE industry that American presidential biography has become, Robert Caro is the robber baron.
Dozens of scholars and researchers are mining a rich vein of archives, tape recordings and memoirs to produce ever longer tomes examining political icons; but there is no one quite like Caro.
His subject is the late president Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 1960s political giant who has been forgotten by a generation of Americans weaned on the earlier glamour of president John Kennedy and the later notoriety of president Richard Nixon who followed.
At long last he has got the third volume of his biography out - one of the publishing events of the year. Earthy and humane yet also petty and troubled, Johnson's is the richest of histories.
It has taken Caro 26 years of his own brand of legwork and midnight oil to get to this point and he has still to write about Johnson's actual presidency, the years that spanned the rise of the Vietnam War and the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s.
This volume - Master of the Senate - covers Johnson's rise to the heights of Washington power, highlighting his ability to wheel and deal, intimidate and animate political friends and foes alike. There is Johnson wrapped in the cords of three phones in the Senate corridors as he bullies a trio of fellow members simultaneously. Then there is Johnson happily carrying on a political discussion with an insider while sitting on a Senate toilet.
Caro is 66 and there are fears he may not complete what has become his life's work. His last volume was published in 1990.