Robert Caro's History and Biography Picks

The Guns of August

Barbara W. Tuchman

I've never forgotten how this great book resonated with me, and I came across it again while I was writing The Passage of Power, because it resonated with President Kennedy. In The Passage we see Kennedy, in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, telling his brother and Ted Sorensen about how he had just read the book, and how he had learned from Tuchman how easily wars can be brought about by the folly of belligerence and also by small mistakes and miscalculations -- and, how, in our confrontation with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missiles, we must, at all costs, avoid stumbling into a nuclear war that way. Buy Now

The Proud Tower

Barbara W. Tuchman

Another one by Tuchman. Because it succeeds in a very hard task: portraying a world changing.  Buy Now

History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (Library of America)

Henry Adams

An all-but-forgotten, but magnificent, piece of writing and political analysis. Buy Now

The Best and the Brightest

David Halberstam

As I was researching the Vietnam War -- how we wandered into that quagmire -- I found myself going over much the same ground that David, a friend of mine, had covered forty years before, in this vivid and deeply reported work. Buy Now

Catherine the Great

Robert K. Massie

Two by Robert Massie: Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, because I love to read books that paint a picture of an era and a society, and he does this for Russia in the time of the two "greats," Peter and Catherine, and does it so very brilliantly.  Buy Peter the Great Buy Catherine the Great

Robert Kennedy

Jack Newfield

This is not an evenhanded book; it is a book infused with love and admiration and respect -- all of which Jack, an otherwise very hard-boiled reporter, had for Robert Kennedy. But his admiration and affection for his subject make this book a favorite of mine. Buy Now