In November 2011, Caro announced that the full project had expanded to five volumes with the fifth requiring another two to three years to write. It will cover Johnson and Vietnam, the Great Society and civil rights era, his decision not to run in 1968, and eventual retirement. As of January 2020, Caro had completed 600 typed manuscript pages and was currently working on a section relating to the passage of Medicare in 1965. He intends to embark on a research trip to Vietnam in the near future. In an interview with "The New York Review of Books" in January 2018, Caro indicated he did not know when the book would be finished, mentioning anywhere from two to ten years.