Caro, author of the series "The Years of Lyndon Johnson," will give a free lecture April 18 (Friday) from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Room 255 of UNT's Eagle Student Services Center, which is located across from UNT's Willis Library between Avenues A and C.

On April 19 (Saturday), the symposium will continue at UNT's Wooten Hall, which is one block west of Welch and Highland streets. Caro and Jan Jarboe Russell, author of "Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson," will both speak.

Registration is required for the April 19 event, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a continental breakfast and also include a barbecue lunch from noon to 1:30 p.m. Caro will speak from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., with Russell ending the symposium from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.

Registration fees are $25 until April 14 (Friday). Registration will be available after April 14 and on the day of the symposium for $35, but participants will not be guaranteed meals. To register, go to http://www.hist.unt.edu/events/ths/ths08_color.pdf and fill out a form.

Caro, a former investigative reporter with Newsday on Long Island, spent years examining documents at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin and interviewing men and women connected with Johnson's life in researching "The Years of Lyndon Johnson."

The biography's first volume, "The Path to Power," was released in 1982 and covers the president's upbringing in Johnson City, Texas, his college years and his early political career through his failed 1941 campaign for the U.S. Senate. "Means of Ascent," the second volume, followed in 1990 and continues Johnson's career through his election to the Senate in 1948, focusing primarily on his bitterly contested battle in the Democratic primary against Coke Stevenson.

The third volume, "Master of the Senate," was published in 2002 and chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent and rule as Senate Majority Leader. Caro received a Pulitzer Prize in Biography for the book, which also received a National Book Award, a Carl Sandburg Award, a John Steinbeck Award and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Caro had earlier received a National Book Critics Circle Award for "The Path to Power."

Caro is currently working on the last volume of the series, tentatively called "The Presidency." His books portray Johnson as both a scheming opportunist and visionary progressive, arguing that his victory in the 1948 Democratic nomination for the Senate was achieved through extensive fraud and ballot box stuffing. Caro also notes Johnson's struggles on behalf of progressive causes such as the Voting Rights Act.

Caro is also the author of "The Power Broker," a 1974 biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, for which he won his first Pulitzer Prize in Biography.

Russell is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly and a syndicated opinion columnist with King Features. Her column appears in the San Antonio Express-News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the San Francisco Examiner, among other newspapers.

Russell first met Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor Johnson in November 1994 when he interviewed her for Texas Monthly about her upcoming 82nd birthday. "Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson" was published in 1999, partly in response to "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" as Russell attempted to move her subject out from under her husband's shadow.

"Lady Bird" was praised by Publishers Weekly as "a complex portrait of an intelligent woman trapped in the social conventions of a ‘Southern matron,' whose idealization of her father colored her relationship with her husband and whose commitment to social justice helped shape LBJ's war on poverty." The book, which ends with the Johnson administration's final months in 1969, also won favorable reviews from the Washington Post and all of the major newspapers in Texas.

For more information on the 2008 Texas History Symposium, contact the UNT Department of History at (940) 565-2288 or history@unt.edu.

What: "Lyndon Baines Johnson -- A Texas President" -- The 2008 Texas History Symposium at the University of North Texas. Featuring addresses by biographers Robert A. Caro and Jan Jarboe Russell

When: April 18 (Friday) from 7:30-8:30 p.m. and April 19 (Saturday) from 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Where: Room 255 of Eagle Student Services Center, located across from UNT's Willis Library between Avenues A and C; and Wooten Hall, located one block west of Welch and Highland streets, UNT campus

Cost: Caro's address on April 18 is free. Caro's and Russell's addresses on April 19, which includes a continental breakfast and barbecue lunch, cost $25 before April 14 and $35 after April 14

Contact: UNT Department of History, (940) 565-2288 or history@unt.edu. A registration form for the April 19 event is available at http://www.hist.unt.edu/events/ths/ths08_color.pdf.

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