Dick Cavett at Authors Night at the East Hampton Library. (Matthew Peyton/Getty)

The Observer put down our book last Saturday and ventured out to Gardiner Farm for the eighth annual Authors Night at the East Hampton Library. By the time we arrived, a plethora of library patrons—evidently undeterred by the cloudy skies—swarmed the tent in hopes of chatting up their favorite writers.

Hosted by library benefactors Alec Baldwin and Barbara Goldsmith, the reception boasted a guest list of more than 100 authors—everyone from the former Real Housewife of New York Kelly Killoren Bensimon, author of the “supermodel diet” book I Can Make You Hot, to the esteemed Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert Caro. Literary aficionados of all breeds meandered between tables with plastic cups of wine, accumulating stacks of personally inscribed hardcovers.

Sitting beside a large pile of copies of his second autobiography, Dick Cavett appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the attention of a throng of admirers and photographers. As we approached, he spontaneously grabbed both sides of our head and pulled us in for a dramatic kiss on the cheek. “I just wanted to give the photographer a thrill,” he whispered, a gleam in his eye.

Mr. Cavett groaned when we asked what was on his summer reading list. “I’m not going to be able to think of the author’s name and it kills me,” he said apologetically. “It’s the best book ever written about Little Bighorn ... It makes all other books, and there are some 200 on the subject, worthless.

“I’ve gotta find the author … Oh God, you’ve ruined my evening!” he exclaimed good-naturedly. “I’ll tell you what you can do. Go to Amazon, type ‘Custer,’ and it’s the one with the view of the river.” (We believe he was referring to Jim Donovan’s A Terrible Glory.)

We stepped outside to join Martin Amis for a cigarette. He told us he was also taking advantage of the summer to catch up on some historical reading. “I’m writing a short novel that has to do with the Holocaust, so I’m reading all about that. But I’m always, always reading about that,” he trailed off.

“And I’m also going to go to the Republican convention in Tampa and write about it for Newsweek, so I’ve been following that,” he said.

Mr. Amis explained that much of his summer has been consumed with work surrounding his most recent novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England, which is out next week. “It’s all slightly a distraction, because the book you’re interested in is not the one you finished last year, but the one you’re writing now. So it’s a bit like being hired by a former self.”

We asked whether he was sick of people asking him about Brooklyn—the British writer moved into a Cobble Hill brownstone with his family nine months ago. “I would be, if I weren’t liking it, but I am, so I don’t mind,” he said. When we inquired about his favorite local restaurants, he explained, “We’re not very foodie. We have two teenage daughters who want to get fed quickly and get out.”

A.J. Jacobs was more revealing about his own eating habits as he eagerly told us about his latest stunt book—Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. “I basically spent two years trying to revamp every part of my life, like diet, exercise, stress level, sleep, sex life, the whole thing,” he explained.

He didn’t have to think much to answer what the hardest part of this endeavor was. “The juice fast!” he exclaimed, explaining that he made his wife do it too. “It was a three-day juice fast and she lasted literally three hours,” he said, laughing.

“My favorite part was writing the book on a treadmill,” Mr. Jacobs informed us, advocating the various benefits of walking while typing, improved concentration being chief among them. “Now, when I try to work sitting down, I fall asleep,” he admitted, adding “You should tell them to buy you all treadmills at The Observer!” (We’ll pass.)

We had heard that the book included a section on how to burn more calories while having sex and asked Mr. Jacobs whether he had any advice to offer. His response was, unfortunately, a little vague, as he explained it had to do with “different positions,” assuring us that “missionary is one of the lower calorie-burning” options.

Celebrity sex-therapist Ruth Westheimer didn’t offer us any more insight on this point, but did reveal that she’d just finished all three volumes of the Fifty Shades trilogy. “I thought it was very interesting because what it proves is that women can be aroused by literature,” she said conclusively, as if this assumption were up for debate. We asked her to weigh in on the disputed sexual progressiveness of the series, asking whether she felt there were any negative consequences to the books’ popularity.

“No. First of all, the woman that was involved was of age,” she said firmly, referring to the book’s narrator, Anastasia, who becomes involved in a BDSM relationship with a wealthy entrepreneur. “And secondly, whoever doesn’t like some subjects, turn the page.”

The best-selling novelist David Baldacci told us about his own pop-literature indulgence, Harry Potter. Though his own kids are now in high school and college, Mr. Baldacci assured us that he’d spent many years reading and listening to all the books in the series on tape. “Jim Dale is the world’s greatest reader,” he reminisced fondly. We asked whether he was looking forward to J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, which will be released next month. “I’ll be reading it probably the first day it comes out,” he said.

The one writer who didn’t seem to have a summer reading list was New York Times financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of the best-selling chronicle of the 2008 financial crisis Too Big to Fail. “Oh god, this is so pathetic,” he said when we approached him, explaining “I have kids right now, so I haven’t been reading anything … Elmo, we watch Elmo, that’s what we do.” He thought some more. “I wish I could give you some books! If my wife was here, she’d tell you there are some books that I’ve read, but now I can’t even think of them,” he said apologetically, evidently relieved when another admirer approached with a book for him to sign.

eschwiegershausen@observer.com

The power biker. (Getty)

The redesign of 34th Street has come in for its fair—or unfair, depending on perspective—share of criticism in the lead up to today's launch of Select Bus Service on the thoroughfare. One person who would gladly board that bus, so to speak? None other than Robert Caro.

The Observer was interviewing Mr. Caro for an article about infrastructure investment—or lack thereof—in the country and the region. (Read all about it in this Wednesday's paper.) We were discussing the way the Bloomberg administration has been reshaping the city in the manner of Moses, if on a far smaller scale, which led The Observer to mention the opposition to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, often compared to "Moses in a skirt." Mr. Caro said he did not understand all the griping.

"I've never met her, but I know people are knocking her," he said. "But what they should remember is that at bottom, what she's engaged in is an effort to rescue the city from an over-dependence on the automobile that hurts the city in so many ways."

During our conversation, Mr. Caro spoke fondly of what the city was, a fabric of neighborhoods and cultures, and what it could be again. It is not clear that New York is returning to those polyglot days—look at the mostly well-to-do neighborhoods bike lanes tend to serve—but Mr. Caro regards it as an improvement nonetheless.

"When Robert Moses came to power, for 40 years, he systematically starved mass-transit, both the subways and the commuter railroads while pouring the city's resources into highways, into the things that would increase its dependence on the automobile," Mr. Caro said. "So I do think we would have a more balanced transportation system without him."

And we're in the midst of that rebalancing? "Yes, I do believe so."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Johnson.

Having worked on his exhaustive biography of Lyndon B. Johnson for almost three decades, Robert A. Caro has delivered the manuscript for the fourth installment, leaving only one more volume before the magnum opus is complete. The Passage of Power will be published by Knopf in May, continuing the story begun in The Path to Power (1982), Means of Ascent (1990) and Master of the Senate (2002). Mr. Caro has already won the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award and the books have collectively sold more than 1 million copies. The first two volumes of the biography will also be released in e-book form on November 23.

A statement from Knopf describes the latest installment:

In The Passage of Power, Caro focuses on five crucial years in the life of Lyndon Johnson -- from late 1958 when he began campaigning for the presidency, to early 1964, after he was thrust into office following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Based on interviews with primary sources and on thousands of original documents, Caro describes the volatile relations between Johnson and John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. He writes of the years of frustration and humiliation Johnson endured as vice president.

"There will be a fifth volume, though we have no timetable for it yet, only the expectation that it will be as remarkable as the first four,” said Knopf chairman Sonny Mehta in the statement. (Here is also a nice story from the AP about the new book, which will be a modest 700 pages in length.)

As we also recently learned, Robert Caro's 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, will be made into a movie for HBO directed by Oliver Stone.

The book, detailing the rise and fall of master builder Robert Moses, is lush with details, one of those books that feels at once made for the screen and yet impossibly adaptable. The Observer dying in anticipation for what could be the best or worst film by Mr. Stone, or even anyone. And who might play Moses?

In addition to assuming directorial duties, Stone will executive produce with former studio chief Peter Guber and Sopranos vet James Gandolfini.

Gandolfini's managers Nancy Sanders and Mark Armstrong are attached as co-executive producers, with Nicholas Meyer (Collateral Damage, The Prince of Egypt) on board to pen the telepic.

We have no idea if it will be James Gandolfini in the end, but can you imagine? He's got the build, the accent, the gravitas, that's for sure. Over on Gothamist, they've lined up a few of their favorites, and if those are our choices, The Observer would have to go with Stanley Tucci.

Hopefully it will not take Mr. Stone as long to make his movie as it did Mr. Caro his book.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Bridges rise;

Roads blast through;

Parks blossom:

Triborough, Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Verrazano;

Northern State, Southern State, Saw Mill, Henry Hudson;

Jones Beach, Riverside Park.

To be sure, the musical is considerably less comprehensive than Mr. Caro's 1,286-page 1974 book, "The Power Broker," which follows Moses' career as city parks commissioner and chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. "Robert Moses Astride New York" moves through major chapters of history in just a few stanzas, and the piece to be performed Saturday is only a sampling of what the composer, Gary Fagin, ultimately hopes will become a full-fledged production featuring additional characters like the neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs and Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.

There was some editing, though, as Fagin apparently took a line from Moses literally and wrote the lyric, "Childless women howling about your nonexistent children." Caro, who has no direct involvement with the project, protested that it came off as true. Fagin demured: "He was absolutely right."

So the old saying still goes--everyone's a critic! To decide for yourself, there is, for now, a one-night performance, which is free and scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday in the World Financial Center's Winter Garden.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Speaking as the 100th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s birth approached last summer, biographer Robert Caro spoke of how Johnson’s presidency managed to be both triumphant and disastrous at the same time.

“You listen to the [people] who were concerned with what Lyndon Johnson did on the domestic side, and you say, ‘There never was a surer touch. There never was more of an understanding of what exactly needed to be done to get this legislation passed,’” Caro told an interviewer. “Then you turn to Vietnam, reading the minutes of the meetings, talking to people. You have a sense of a man who didn't know what to do.”

The escalation of the war in Vietnam, of course, is what did Johnson in, both in 1968, when he was forced to abandon plans to seek a second full term when Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar insurgency embarrassed him in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, and in the decades since, as his legacy has come to be defined by his Vietnam stubbornness and duplicity.  

It has so tarred his name that when Hillary Clinton, as a presidential candidate, invoked his masterful savvy in pushing sweeping civil rights legislation through a reluctant Congress as an example of what talented presidential leadership can achieve, it was considered a gaffe. “Did any living Democrat ever imagine that any other living Democrat would try to win a presidential primary in New Hampshire by comparing herself to L.B.J.?” Maureen Dowd asked in The New York Times.

L.B.J.’s story seems particularly apt all of a sudden, with the Obama administration’s surprise decision this week to force out General David McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, and to replace him with Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal.

The bold move—commanders like McKiernan, who had one year left on his term, are rarely fired so publicly—is part of a calculated effort by the administration to employ in Afghanistan the same type of counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq under David Petraeus. But it also has tremendous political significance within the United States: From this point forward, the war in Afghanistan that he inherited from George W. Bush is Barack Obama’s war. And as L.B.J. learned with Vietnam (and George W. Bush with Iraq), when you own a war that becomes unpopular, no amount of political savvy on the domestic front can undo the damage.

For now, Obama doesn’t face immediate political danger. It’s widely understood that he inherited Afghanistan from Bush and redirecting U.S. troops and resources to the Asian nation—the “real” central front in the war on terror, as Obama argued—was a main theme of his presidential campaign last year. As a result, the Democratic leaders in Congress, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a fierce opponent of the Iraq war from the very beginning, have stood behind him as he’s redeployed tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan and begun instituting his new strategy.

Like war-wary Congressional Democrats, the public is also ready to give Obama some latitude. A poll two months ago showed that 64 percent of Americans supported his plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. Republicans, by and large, are standing with Obama too. A supplemental military spending bill that will fund U.S. operations in Afghanistan—the kind of legislation that Democrats like Pelosi would fight in the Bush years—should breeze through Congress soon with deep bipartisan support.

But that goodwill won’t last if Obama’s plan produces more instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and produces an untenable American casualty count. Given the history of the region, it’s all too conceivable it is that the plan could lead to a quagmire. And the early indicators haven’t necessarily been encouraging.

Some Democrats are already expressing this view and openly opposing Obama—or at least strongly hinting at it. David Obey, an old Wisconsin progressive now serving his fourth decade in the House, used an interview with The New York Times this week to draw a direct parallel to Vietnam, likening Obama to Richard Nixon, who inherited that war from L.B.J. At the end of his first year in office, Obey said, “Nixon had not moved the policy, and so I began to oppose the war. I am following that same approach here.”

Right now, such open dissent is mostly limited to the most staunchly antiwar pockets of the Democratic Party. But most Democrats, particularly in the House, tend to be very suspicious of prolonged, large-scale U.S. military interventions anywhere. Because it is a new and popular Democratic president who is pursuing such a policy in Afghanistan, they have mostly fallen into line, however unenthusiastically. But they undoubtedly share the same basic concerns that Obey voiced.

In the wake of Iraq, this is where most Americans are, too. If violence and American casualties become daily front-page news, voters will turn on Obama’s strategy very quickly, sensing another Iraq debacle in the making. Pressure, from the public and from within his own party, to junk the strategy and leave would mount. L.B.J. found himself in this situation in 1967 and 1968. He ignored the critics, his popularity plummeted, his clout with Congress withered, and Vietnam only spiraled further out of control.

Obama has the most ambitious domestic agenda of any president since L.B.J., and (for now, anyway) he has the public support and partisan numbers in Congress to achieve much of it. We’re a long way from knowing whether his Afghanistan plan will work—and maybe it will. But by making such a major commitment in such a volatile region, he invites the obvious comparison to L.B.J.’s example—limitless domestic potential undercut by a foreign entanglement gone wrong.

"I've spent my life writing books about political power," the godly 73-year-old biographer Robert Caro said earlier today, "and for me, there's no one on the face of the earth that I'd rather be watching an election night with than Ted Sorensen, with the exception, of course, of Lyndon Johnson."

Mr. Caro, of course, won one of his two Pulitzers for his third book on Johnson, President Kennedy's successor; Mr. Sorensen, his host tonight, was Kennedy's speechwriter and close adviser. Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, who is even better-spoken than that mellifluous, multi-syllabic name suggests, will be at the get-together tonight, too. He was Robert F. Kennedy's assistant in the 60s.

Sadly, Mr. Sorensen and his wife, a senior adviser to the United Nations Foundation, are not allowing uninvited guests. "He has, of course, been a participant in some of the great primary and general election contests of American history," Mr. Caro said about the speechwriter, "and this is going to be another one."

"It's a Princeton versus Yale thing."

That's Edward Tenner, the author of Why Things Bite Back, summing up the rivalry between Robert Caro and the master builder.

Mr. Caro graduated Princeton in 1957; Moses finished Yale in 1909.

Mr. Tenner told The Real Estate:

Other Yalies: William F. Buckley Jr.; Cole Porter; George W. Bush; Jennifer Beals.

Other Princetonians: George Kennan; Woodrow Wilson; Samuel Alito; Brooke Shields.

Mr. Tenner has a whole anatomy of the Ivies which you can find via his website. He, by the way, is Princeton '65.

- Matthew Schuerman

But throughout the next hour, Mr. Caro kept making subtle suggestions about how that exhibit, "Robert Moses and the Making of the Modern City," came up short.

While the exhibit emphasizes the impact Moses had on "the built environment" without regard for his methods, Mr. Caro argued, "The way that Robert Moses left his mark on New York has to do with the way he treated the people of the city"--in particular how he diverted money from health clinics to his construction projects.

And to those who had found Mr. Caro's subtitle (Robert Moses and the Fall of New York) to be incongruous with the city's renaissance, he replied, "I meant that the city had fallen, not that it was fallen forever."

And for those who feel the ends justify Moses' means, Mr. Caro said:

The overflow crowd jumped to its feet to give the guy a standing ovation.

- Matthew Schuerman