Working

Working, by Robert A. Caro, explains the legendary author's early years and strategies for producing the high quality work that has made him one of the greatest authors of all time.

Chief among the lessons that Caro has learned is the lesson to 'turn every page'. He learned this early on in his career at Newsday, but has carried through with it, to the best of his ability, to this day. Caro is legendary for doing ungodly amounts of research on his subjects and their acquaintances. He interviews everyone that could have witnessed certain events, and combs through reams of papers to find needles in the haystack.

Interestingly, Caro is notorious for being late with his books. He justifies it in a way that makes it forgivable, though. Rather than forcing himself to fit into arbitrary deadlines, he forces himself to write ~1,000 words each day. That keeps him honest and ensures he isn't intentionally expanding the amount of time it takes for him to complete the masterpieces he writes.

Caro also has interesting tactics that he employs while interviewing his subjects. He chooses to interview not just the important folks, but especially the non-important folks (the janitors, chauffeurs, secretaries), who may have critical insight into one's mindset during important moments. Additionally, when conducting his interviews, Caro makes sure to dig and to set the scene. He asks probing questions repeatedly to ensure that the reader can imagine themselves in the scene. Sometimes he asks these questions to the extent in which the subject grows exasperated. Nonetheless, this digging often tends to surface gold.

Caro's habits and lessons that he has picked up from others along the way have enabled him to put together arguably the greatest corpus of any biographer that has yet lived.