Rifling Record

Rifling Through the Archives

Chris Heath | Smithsonian | 13th February 2025

Robert Caro, the journalist best known for his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, gives a guided tour of his archive. It contains everything from his senior thesis that "stinks" to the calendar showing how many words he writes a day. At the age of 89, his fifth and final volume of about Johnson stands unfinished at 980 pages. He has to know how a book will end before he can start writing it (6,400 words)

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Motet For The Record

Henry Freedland | Lapham's Quarterly | 22nd July 2025

Patchwork essay, formed of quotations from Lewis H. Lapham's writings. The result is profound, in places: "Nothing necessarily follows from anything else. The future comes and goes so quickly that one gets used to surprise entrances and sudden exits. Buy the bicycle or the truck, wrap up the handbag and the dress, take possession of the deck chair or the parrot, and you begin the world all over again" (3,600 words)