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Pulitzer Prize winner and author Robert Caro, who has written extensively on the life and presidency of President Lyndon B. Johnson, will give the inaugural Rutman Distinguished Lecture on the American Presidency at the University of 易胜博官网 on Friday, Sept. 27, 2013.

Pulitzer Prize winner and author Robert Caro, who has written extensively on the life and presidency of President Lyndon B. Johnson, will give the inaugural Rutman Distinguished Lecture on the American Presidency at the University of 易胜博官网 Friday, Sept. 27, 2013.

The lecture "Fifty Years Ago: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and November 22, 1963" will be held at 7 p.m. in Richards Auditorium, Murkland Hall. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required due to limited seating capacity.

鈥淣o one has provided a more penetrating, deeply researched, and illuminating portrait of President Lyndon Johnson and the times in which he lived than Robert Caro. His brilliant four-volume study of Johnson's rise to power and LBJ's impact on American political history illuminate in extraordinary detail not only the character of one of our most complex presidents but the nature of our democracy itself,鈥� said 易胜博官网 Prof. Ellen Fitzpatrick, a historian who researches presidential history of the 20th century.

鈥淐aro is a master historian, whose literary gifts, capacity for storytelling, and brilliant analytical mind have deeply enriched our understanding of the modern presidency. How fitting it is that Robert Caro begin our new series of lectures on the American presidency, and how appropriate that the series take place in 易胜博官网, where so many presidential aspirations have taken flight,鈥� Fitzpatrick said.

The Rutman Distinguished Lecture Series on the American Presidency is generously supported by J. Morgan Rutman 鈥�84 and Tara Rutman in collaboration with the President鈥檚 Distinguished Speakers Series. The lecture series is in honor of Morgan Rutman鈥檚 parents Darrett B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman. Darrett Rutman was a distinguished scholar of early American history who served on the faculty of the 易胜博官网 History Department from 1968 to 1984. His mother Anita Rutman was a historical researcher and co-author with his father on several works. The lecture series focuses on American political history with an emphasis on the modern and historical context of the American presidency.

Morgan Rutman is president of Willoughby Capital Holdings, a private investment firm in New York. He graduated with honors from the 易胜博官网 Whittemore School of Business and Economics and serves on the 易胜博官网 Foundation Board of Directors.

Caro has written biographies of New York鈥檚 Robert Moses and Johnson. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, has three times won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and Best Biography, and has won nearly听every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best 鈥渆xemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.鈥� In 2010 he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.

To create his first book, 鈥淭he Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,鈥� Caro spent seven years tracing and talking with hundreds of men and women who worked with, for, or against Robert Moses, including a score of his top aides. He examined mountains of files never opened to the public. 鈥淭he Power Broker鈥� was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of the 20th century.

When Caro decided to start researching President Lyndon Johnson, which would lead to four books about the former president鈥檚 life, Caro and his wife, Ina, moved from his native New York City to the Texas Hill Country and then to Washington, D.C., to live in the locales in which Johnson grew up and in which he built, while still young, his first political machine. Caro has spent years examining documents at the Johnson Library in Austin and interviewing men and women connected with Johnson鈥檚 life, many of whom had never before been interviewed.

Caro graduated from Princeton University and later became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He lives in New York City.

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