Robert A. Caro on Biography

I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. [Caro is the author of a multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.] I never had the slightest interest in doing that. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer, I conceived of biography as a means of illuminating the times and the great forces that shape the times--particularly political power. A biography will only do that, of course, if the biography is about the right man.

Robert A. Caro in Extraordinary Lives, edited by William Zinsser, 1986