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by hypersoar 1256 days ago
Caro tragically had to cut a chapter about Moses's fight with Jane Jacobs from the book. His initial manuscript was a million(!) words. He managed to cut it down to a trim 700,000. For comparison, the longest Song of Ice and Fire novel is 500,000.

Fortunately, he's handing all of his papers over to the New York Historical Society. I can only imagine how many books worth of gold is there to mined by future authors. The NYT had a great article about it a couple years ago (to the day, as it happens):

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/nyregion/robert-caro-arch...