Robert Caro to receive the National Book Award for lifetime achievement

Robert Caro, whose towering series of books The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a milestone in political journalism, will receive the National Book Award's lifetime achievement award for "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters," in November, The Associated Press reports. Caro has already won a competitive National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes for the series, which comprises four books, released in 1982, 1990, 2002, and 2012. His first book, a definitive biography of the controversial city planner Robert Moses called The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, also won a Pulitzer.

"Caro's in-depth and long-term exploration of the lives of two prominent men makes a much larger contribution to American Letters than it might seem at first glance," Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation, said in a statement. "His life's work, and his stunning prose, teaches us to better understand political influence, American democracy, and the true power of biography."

Caro has said that he knows the very last sentence of what will be the very last book in his Johnson series, though he has yet to reveal when it will come out.

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