InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 1

FILM REVIEWS
panic mode. As someone who moved home after college partly to
sustain an unpaid publishing internship — which never turned
into a full-time job — I viewed much of Gottlieb’s archival footage
with a certain (perhaps unwarranted) wistfulness. Here are but
two bespeckled white dudes arguing about semicolons in a
book-lined conference room, and not a federal antitrust lawsuit,
employee walkout, or paywall in sight. Ah, those were the days.
the luminary who, among other achievements, convinced Joseph
Heller to swap out “18” with “22” in the title of his most famous
book. As Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie has enviable access to both
men, as well as a host of other literary titans, industry insiders,
Caro superfans, and a couple of former Presidents to share in
the memories of its two octogenarian subjects.
After quick biographical sketches — Caro’s unhappy childhood,
Gottlieb’s unabashed nerdiness — the documentary settles into a
pleasantly unobtrusive yet instructive rhythm. In addition to its
central relationship, Turn Every Page is part New York City history
as told through Caro’s biography of its massively influential and
divisive master builder, Robert Moses, and part 20th-century
American history as told through his multi-volume biography of
President Lyndon B. Johnson. It’s also a slightly rose-tinted
chronicle of the golden age of print media. Both men started
their careers in the 1960s, long before the Internet’s slurry of free
and endless content sent the publishing industry into prolonged
An unelected city planner might not seem like the natural subject
for a 1,300-page doorstop, but no matter: like Infinite Jest, just
having The Power Broker on your shelf, no matter how dusty,
oozes intellectual pedigree. No one actually expects you to read
it (I myself live with two city planners, and I’ve only ever seen the
book used as a laptop stand.) But for its many fans — it is
currently in its 41st continuous printing — The Power Broker both
cemented Caro’s genius and set the stage for his next
multi-decade undertaking: an as-yet-unfinished five-part
biography of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who wielded immense
political power in profoundly contradictory ways. And every step
of the way, Robert Gottlieb was there with his No. 2 pencil (never
mechanical!) to wrangle, wrassle, and chisel Caro’s manuscripts
into masterpieces. As he wryly states early in the documentary,
“He does the work, I do the cleanup. Then we fight.” If all editorial
relationships were twice as adversarial but even half as fruitful,
publishing executives might have cause to finally stop
hand-wringing (and maybe even raise wages.)
The timing of Turn Every Page is fortuitous, and not just because
its subjects are rapidly aging and Caro is still industriously
plugging away at Now! That’s What I Call LBJ. The past few years
have enjoyed a renewed popular interest in urbanism as a whole,
with the pandemic sparking national conversations about the
role of urban spaces post-lockdown; suddenly, it seemed like all
the cool kids were discussing Jace Jacobs over their sourdough
starters. This interest hasn’t abated: 2022 saw the debut of
Straight Line Crazy, starring Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses (a
canny bit of casting for someone who’s often viewed as the
Voldemort of modern cityscapes). And given the global political
and cultural slide toward authoritarianism, Caro’s stated goal —
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