NEW YORK -- Even at age 76, even after writing four volumes on President Lyndon Johnson, author Robert Caro still plans to spend time doing research in Vietnam.
He still plans to live for a time in a Southern city, to better gauge the impact of the Voting Rights Act.
And, yes, he still plans to finish his landmark, monumental project on LBJ.
Sensing some skepticism on the part of a recent visitor, Caro smiled and said: "My answer is yes, but why would you believe me?"
After all, more than 35 years ago, Caro envisioned just three volumes on the project called The Years of Lyndon Johnson; now he is at work on book number five.
The fourth volume -- The Passage to Power, published last week -- covers Johnson's frustrating vice presidency, his sudden and traumatic ascension to the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and how he quickly harnesses the powers of the job to forge the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other legislation.
Still to come: The 1964 election win over Barry Goldwater, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Great Society, and the collapse of Johnson's presidency in the quagmire of Vietnam.
"I really intend to do this in one book," Caro said from his nondescript, book-lined office in midtown Manhattan.
Caro adds, "I've started writing -- I haven't written very much of it."
He's also done most of the research, though not all of it. Caro said he wants to try and see for himself what kind of an impact Johnson's policies have had a half-century later.
As in Vietnam, for instance.
"I want to do things with Vietnam," Caro said. "I want to see the jungle -- feel the jungle."
Caro pointed out that Johnson himself plotted bombing targets in Vietnam. The B-52s flew so high that villagers below could not see the planes -- or even hear them.
"A lot of those villages didn't know they were being bombed until the bombs actually struck," Caro said.
"You don't know what you're going to find out by living in a place until you live there," Caro said. "I don't know what I'm going to find out."
The same theory applies to Caro's desire to live in a southern city -- yet to be determined -- to better assess the changes wrought by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
(Last week, we reported Caro's comments on one of that law's most significant legacies: President Barack Obama.)
"You have to live in the place that you write about," Caro said.
Caro has done this kind of thing before.
When he began the Johnson project back during the late 1970s, Obama lived for a time in the Texas Hill Country to get a feeling for the hardscrabble life that produced Lyndon Johnson.
During his time there, Caro discovered one big reason that rural voters revered Johnson, his work for rural electrification. For them, Caro said, LBJ is the one who "brought the lights" to the darkest corners of Central Texas.
Caro's first Johnson book, The Path to Power, came out in 1982. It traced Johnson's rise from the Hill Country to the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as his defeat in a 1941 Senate race.
The second volume, Means of Ascent, came out in 1990, and detailed how Johnson and his team stole the 1948 election to the Senate.
Volume three, Master of the Senate, didn't arrive until 2002. It described how Johnson rose to power in the Senate and transformed that institution, securing the first civil rights legislation in nearly a century.
The Passage to Power -- which takes Johnson from his failure to win the 1960 Democratic presidential to the White House in the wake of Kennedy's death -- took another ten years to complete.
It is Caro's legendary research and painstaking attention to detail that makes these books such lengthy projects.
In discussing this project, Caro rejects the idea he is "obsessed" with Johnson; he is instead "fascinated" with him.
"I don't think I'm devoting my life to this one guy," Caro said. "I think I am devoting my life by using this one guy -- this master of political power -- to examine political power in the United States of America in the second half of the 20th Century."
Caro appears to be in good health. He is very engaged when discussing Johnson's career, saying he is "thrilled to be doing these books."
Caro would not the first historian who is unable to finish multi-volume project.
William Manchester died before wrapping up his three-volume biography of Winston Churchill. But that last volume will be published later this year with the help of writer Paul Reid.
That kind of thing won't happen with Caro -- if he doesn't finish the project entitled The Years of Lyndon Johnson, no one will; Caro has made it a condition of his will.
"I don't want my name on something that isn't all my work," Caro said. "Anything that has my name on it, I want to be mine."
