Specialist on LBJ Awarded Book Prize

Robert Caro on Wednesday won the National Book Award for “Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” his third book on the life of the late president.

Caro, who is working on a fourth and his intended last book on Johnson, said in a statement read at the National Book Foundation award ceremony here that people often ask if he gets bored spending so much time on one person.

“I consider each of my four books studies on political power, how it is acquired and how it is used,” he said. “If you care about political power, every day with LBJ is an eye-opening day.... Every day I learn something I’d never thought of.”

Winning in the fiction category was Julia Glass for her first novel, “Three Junes,” about three summers in the lives of a Scottish family.

Ruth Stone won the poetry award for her collection “In the Next Galaxy.”

Winning at age 87, she said, “I think they probably gave it to me because I’m old.

“I’ve been writing poetry, or whatever it is, since I was 5 or 6 years old,” Stone said.

“I don’t know why I did it. It was like a stream alongside me. It just talks to me, and I write it down.”

Nancy Farmer won the award for young people’s literature for “The House of the Scorpion.”

Philip Roth, author of “Goodbye, Columbus,” “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “American Pastoral,” received an award for distinguished contribution to American letters.