The Eta Gamma Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa at Coffeyville Community College was represented at The University of Tulsa’s Presidential Lecture Series by chapter vice president of communications Laura Lyons.  The event was held Tuesday, February 12, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. in the Allen Chapman Activity Center on the TU campus.  Featured speaker was author Robert Caro.

In preparation for his first book The Power Broker:  Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), Caro spent seven years researching and talking with hundreds of people connected to New York City political powerhouse Robert Moses.  The book revealed how Moses was a key player in the development and decline of New York City’s physical structure and political system.  Acclaimed today as a modern classic, The Power Broker was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of the 20th century.

After the release of The Power Broker, Caro and his wife moved from New York City to the Texas Hill Country and later to Washington, D.C., to trace the path of America’s 36th president and write The Years of Lyndon Johnson.  Documented in four volumes, The Path to Power (1990), Means of Ascent (1991), Master of the Senate (2003) and The Passage of Power (2012), Caro’s series has been touted as one of the great political biographies of the modern age.

For his Tuesday evening lecture Caro pulled from his extensive knowledge of Lyndon B. Johnson to share with the audience, the minute details of the Kennedy assassination from Lyndon Johnson’s point of view.  From his exhaustive research, Caro could find no evidence which would involve Johnson in the Kennedy assassination.  When asked if he “liked” Johnson, Caro said that he was rather in “awe” of the man and all that he accomplished.

The Presidential Lecture Series is free the public and sponsored by The Darcy O’Brien Endowed Chair, The University of Tulsa.