The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

Sep 29, 2007 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone in the goddamn world (especially New Yorkers)

Shelves: here-is-new-york, favorites

This is definitely the greatest book that I have ever read.

Midway through adolescence, I began wondering a bit which life event would finally make me feel like an adult. Of course I had the usual teenaged hypotheses, and acted accordingly to test some of them out. Getting drunk? Having sex? Driving a car? Going to college? None of these things did make me feel grownup; in many instances, their effect was the opposite. I had a brief thrilling moment of maturity when I voted for the fi ...more

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Nov 30, 2009 Matt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, biography

At nearly 1,200 pages of text (not including endnotes and the index), Robert Caro’s The Power Broker is a big book. And despite its uniformly excellent quality – its Pulitzer Prize is well deserved – I felt every single one of those pages. This book came to dominate my reading time, to the extent that I started using my reading time to do other things, like watching erotic thrillers on Netflix streaming video. Like I said, it’s not a bad book. Actually, it’s a great book. Therefore, as I plodded along ...more

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Apr 16, 2016 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, new-york-city, biography-biographical

Before Trump There Was Moses

Want to understand the politics and the reasons why NYC is the way it is? Read it and weep.

Robert Moses was never elected to public office. Yet his power over public finance and social decision-making was greater than that of any elected official, including at times the President of the United States (His nemesis, however, was the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also unelected to anything but just as crafty).

Moses created his p Before Trump There Was Moses

Want to understand the politics and the reasons why NYC is the way it is? Read it and weep.

Robert Moses was never elected to public office. Yet his power over public finance and social decision-making was greater than that of any elected official, including at times the President of the United States (His nemesis, however, was the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also unelected to anything but just as crafty).

Moses created his power by creating the laws which New York State politicians passed without reading or understanding the fine print. He effectively institutionalised himself as, among other posts, the Chairman of the Long Island State Parks Commission, and the head of the Triborough Bridge Authority. These positions, thanks to his foresightful design, were immune to political review.

At the LISPC, he single-handedly designed the expansion of the New York City suburbs from the 1930's onward as totally dependent on the automobile and in such a way that would limit racial integration. At the Triborough Bridge Authority, he created a spectacularly successful cash cow whose funds could not be touched without his approval. And even the 1970's financial collapse of the City was not enough to attract this approval.

Yet other administrative positions, often held simultaneously in the City and the State, gave Moses blanket-control of every significant planning and planning-variance decision within the City. His tentacles of power extended even to the Northern reaches of the State through his control of electricity generation along the St. Lawrence River.

There is no evidence that Moses ever took a bribe or benefitted financially from his immense power. He started his career and pursued it as an idealist. He was nonetheless a dictator who routinely destroyed neighbourhoods, regularly flouted the law, coerced politicians of both major parties, and ultimately left a legacy of social devastation which will last for decades if not centuries.

Caro's documentation of Moses's strategy and activities is unparalleled. His attention to detail and nuance is acute. His judgments and conclusions are never precipitous and always subtle. This book should be on the required reading list of every course in democratic government in every country on the planet. ...more

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Jul 28, 2012 Jan-Maat added it

Shelves: 20th-century, biographical, modern-history, politics-and-polemic, usa, business-management-pm

This is a book about power...And parks.

For forty-four years Robert Moses through the control of different institutions, often whose formal authorities he had designed and drafted into legislation, created a power base that enabled him to escape the constraints laid upon bureaucrats and elected officials and to stamp his vision upon the developing city of New York.

If the Bonfire of the Vanities is the shock book of 1980s New York then The Power Broker Robert Moses and the Fall of New York tells ...more

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May 02, 2012 Brian rated it it was amazing

In early 2012 on a business trip to NYC, I was driving on Long Island Expressway for the first time when an odd and seemingly unnecessary bend in the road got my curiousity. Searching for the answer later in the day brought me to Robert Moses, which then brought me to this book, and as much as I loved this behemoth, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm in a better place viz-a-viz humanity for having read it.

Want to read a good horror book? Forget the kings of the genre in fiction, C ...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

I am neither an urban planner, nor a New Yorker. With that cleared up, I can attempt to review this epic biography by Robert A. Caro, which has garnered a great deal of hype over the past 40 years. Caro takes the entire life of this man and puts it out for review, letting nothing escape his descriptive powers (though the book is a mere 1200 of the original 3000 pages Caro prepared). The book is so thorough and complex that the reader must digest a great deal of information to move through the se I am neither an urban planner, nor a New Yorker. With that cleared up, I can attempt to review this epic biography by Robert A. Caro, which has garnered a great deal of hype over the past 40 years. Caro takes the entire life of this man and puts it out for review, letting nothing escape his descriptive powers (though the book is a mere 1200 of the original 3000 pages Caro prepared). The book is so thorough and complex that the reader must digest a great deal of information to move through the sections and absorb all that is on offer. Caro depicts the life of Robert Moses as being quite multi-faceted: a staunchly matriarchal home, joyful playground developer, power hungry Parks Commissioner, villain to many. Filled with numerous sources and a plethora of interview comments, Caro describes this vastly powerful man who changed New York City, quite literally, into the urban powerhouse of the United States. Caro’s three themes (discussed below) emanate throughout the text: Moses’ hunger for power, his ability to gain it without election, and the complete about-face done by New Yorkers over the decades because of that power. These themes keep the pace of the book moving and ensure the reader pays attention, to see the apparent changes as the chapters (and events in time) progress.

Moses’ hunger for power could be said to have been planted in a home run by his mother, who accepted no other opinion but her own. Caro lays the groundwork for Moses’ eventual insatiable need for control at her feet, indirectly. A benign search for power by Robert Moses begins upon his returns from Oxford, with the hopes of building new parks for the people of New York, especially children who have no playgrounds on which to spend their time. This morphs into a lust for larger parks and the development of edifices that will leave an indelible mark on the city as a whole. Caro exemplifies this early malignant power intoxication through the creation of the Central Park Zoo, his numerous bridge projects, as well as the construction of the UN buildings. This hunger is not sated there, as Moses continues to forge ahead with expressways to better deal with the increased traffic the 1940s and 50s bring with it, caring little for those in whose way his grand ideas sit. Caro portrays Moses as one who becomes deeply inebriated on power and who eventually loses touch with those he, originally, sought to help. He wants to leave his mark on the city and uses his backhand connections to get the needed ‘in’ to do so. He outwardly circumnavigates those in his way (even elected officials) by writing and forcing legislation to pass the New York Legislature that gives him quasi-deist control of New York (city AND state), to do with what he will. Caro is clear, however, to include those men who stand in his way, including the one man with more power than he and no interest in ceding it, Nelson Rockefeller. It was Rockefeller’s emergence on the political scene and saw the end of Moses’ power. Add to that the horrible 1964 World Fair presidency, as well as Mayor John Lindsay, and you can already hear the nails slamming into the coffin.

Caro also depicts the Moses power addiction as one run entirely from the backrooms and within arm’s length of the election box. Save for a single run for Governor of New York, Moses never had to face the people to seek their permission for his ideas. He cozied up to mayors and governors into whom he created yes-men or disposed of those who tried to thwart him with his numerous other connections. Legislation penned from his desk came to the floor of the State Legislature and was pushed through with some ease, leaving it only to be signed by a governor here and there. Until FDR came onto the scene (first as Governor of New York and then as President of the United States), Moses had an easy cake walk. Caro denotes how Moses dodges many bullets and used his connections in media and various arms of the political realm to continue forging ahead and getting his ideas approved. A true schemer who saw no issue with sidestepping the democratic process, yet tossed out communist epithets against his opponents, to blackball them during the highly McCarthy-esque era in America.

Caro’s greatest feat has got to be the radical change in public opinion he demonstrated. From chanting school children loving Robert Moses to the hatred by all New Yorkers by the mid-1950s, Moses was left to dodge fists, bottles, and anything else that could be thrown. Caro is sure to include some of the key turnarounds in the book. Schoolchildren, as mentioned above, are but one group who came to vilify him. Mothers with babies, who, in the early chapters, adore him for creating parks and playgrounds (complete with diaper huts) turn on him as he decides to bulldoze those parks down 30 years later to create a parking lot. The poor, who cheered on the creation of open space for them, free of charge, became his greatest obstacle when he needed to destroy their homes to create expressways. Caro is masterful at simply telling the tale and letting the reader make the connections.

Caro’s missive is so detailed that it makes sense why this project was years in the making. It uses the vast amount of information at Caro’s fingertips to lay out the story and lets the reader decide what they wish about the entire story on offer. That said, there is no doubt that any reader who takes the time to read the book will come away with at least some sour taste in their mouth for all Moses did in New York City. Caro throws no punches and does not apologise for what his research discovered. The book added fuel to the already strong fire of dislike surrounding Robert Moses in 1974. It is not hard to understand why this is the case.

The book’s length may be its own downside, although I did not feel things dragged on too unnecessarily. The reader may, stuck in a quagmire of verbose explanation, wonder why we care so much about a certain issue. Having patience to forge ahead and connect the eventual dots leads to that ‘ah ha’ moment where previous glassy-eyed reading is worth the outcome.

Having read all that Caro has penned already in the LBJ saga, I am well-versed in the format and style used in the biographies. I thoroughly enjoy this, even with long and complex missives with hours of detail on many subjects. It is only through this detailed analysis that the reader can truly come to see the duplicitous nature of Moses. The latter part of the book shows just how racist and how completely out of touch Moses became with the people he tried to help in his early years. Caro’s presentation of this about-face is stunning and leaves the interested reader to wonder where things went wrong. Alas, the details are woven through hundreds of pages that it is difficult to pinpoint the precise location of this change.

There is too much for the casual reader to digest in this, and likely any Caro book, biography. I would not recommend its undertaking by anyone who does not have a strong thirst for knowledge or someone looking for a quick read. Then again, the mere size of the book (or length of its audio version) will scare many away. However, those who are intrigued by political and urban histories will surely devour all this book offers. Caro is the master storyteller and can bring many stories to life with his detailed descriptions as well as his highly researched perspectives. A must read for those who marvel at the intricacies of New York City’s traffic edifices and green spaces.

Kudos in high order, Mr. Caro, for this your first work. It shows your attention to detail and interest in a thorough analysis for all to interpret. You have outdone yourself for sure. ...more

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Aug 06, 2017 Roy Lotz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: americana, new-yawk, biography-memoir-travel, highly-recommended-favorites, supermassive

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East—to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them—who were above such trifling.

—Henry David Thoreau

“Who’s Robert Moses?” I asked my brother, after he bought this book

To drive from my house to the city, you need to take the Saw Mill Parkway across the Henry Hudson Bridge onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. Those roads, and that bridge, were built under the direction of Robert Moses. If ...more

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Aug 18, 2015 Nancy rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobooks-2015, 2015-read, yale, new-york, best-of-2015

Can a book be both endlessly enthralling and gratuitously tedious simultaneously? Apparently, it can.

They say that biographers identify with their subject, and Robert Caro was not untouched by the megalomania that drove Robert Moses. The worst problem was his tendency to belabor his points, as if his readers were slightly dim and couldn't be trusted to get a point the first time, or remember it. How many times should it be necessary to say that the West Side Highway would cut off New ...more

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Dec 18, 2016 Christy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Moses was a horrifying example of the idea of "progress" gone stupid and taking advantage of a Manifest Destiny-like philosophy of urbanization. His tactics in NY and so many other cities severed people from each other with scalpel looking to exacerbate class divisions. So despicable that he deliberately build bridges too low to accommodate the city busses so that so the poor and especially the Blacks couldn't go out to the Long Island beaches. He advocated for a "White only" area of Stuyvesant, ...more

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Apr 02, 2019 Dax rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biographies, nonfiction, four-digits, mustich-1000, pulitzer-nonfiction, top-ten-2019, 5-stars

A biography, a history of mid 20th Century New York City politics and a study of the corruptive qualities of power. This is not my favorite biography I have ever read, but it might be the most impressive. For over 1,100 pages (with another 200 pages for notes and a bibliography), Caro is able to keep the narrative thread together despite a plethora of information and influential figures. “The Power Broker” requires a big commitment, but it was easily worth the two months of my reading time.

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Feb 19, 2017 Susan O rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, history-american, pulitzers-biography, robert-caro, 2017-read, 2017-pulitzers-read, history-favorites

Brilliant! I really don't know what to say about this book. It's monumental, brilliantly written and strangely enthralling. I would never have believed that a book about parks, highways, and bridges, many, many, of each, would be so interesting. Of course they all revolve around Robert Moses, who is fascinating and also despicable. He is however, an example of how to amass power, and how to use it, for better and for worse.

Caro is a brilliant writer. This is the 4th of his 5 published works tha ...more

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Jan 12, 2016 Nicholas Sparks rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nicholas-recommends

This biography of Robert Moses—the highly influential urban planner who shaped the modern city during the 20th century—was first published in 1975, during a period of prolonged urban decline, adding another layer of complexity for today’s reader.

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Dec 05, 2007 Anne rated it it was amazing

Holy mother of all that is holy. If you've got any attachment to New York, any interest in city planning, and any stamina whatsoever, RUN (do not walk) to get your own copy and read, read, read!!!

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Feb 26, 2009 Tony rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: top-10-2009

A massive, magisterial work on the man who built the roads, parks, etc. in New York. I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time because the author's continuing books on Lyndon Johnson are superb. The Power Broker did not disappoint. At times this bordered almost on too much information and there were certainly some thematic redundancies. But these are mere quibbles. There is a real sense of 'being in the room' while events are occurring. Caro, likewise, is able to explain legal, structural and ...more

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Aug 09, 2007 Mishka rated it it was amazing

Shelves: autobiosnbios, essentials

i have never been afraid of hyperbole so here goes: i bow down before the greatness of this book. i can separate my 10 years living in new york as pre-caro and post-caro. every aspect of my life in new york, the subway, the roads, parks, politics (current and historical), every detail of mishka brown's highly anticipated treatise 'what i would do if i was in charge - the new york city edition' (yes, i talk about myself in the third person) is influenced by this book...this book is so vast, so fa ...more

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Sep 14, 2014 Charles Gonzalez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I have read some amazing books over the past 30 years. For a long time Neil Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie" was my all time favorite because it grabbed me in a way that no other work had until then (1989). It unwrapped the Vietnam war in a way that had not been unwrapped for me until then, and Sheehan's story of his hero's personal struggles, his rise and fall is forever ingrained in me as a lesson in the interchange between man and war. Gibbons Rise and Fall, Thucydides, Halberstam's , "Th I have read some amazing books over the past 30 years. For a long time Neil Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie" was my all time favorite because it grabbed me in a way that no other work had until then (1989). It unwrapped the Vietnam war in a way that had not been unwrapped for me until then, and Sheehan's story of his hero's personal struggles, his rise and fall is forever ingrained in me as a lesson in the interchange between man and war. Gibbons Rise and Fall, Thucydides, Halberstam's , "The Children", Taylor Branch's civil rights trilogy and Caro's epic about Johnson all captured and held me with amazing stories and storytelling about special individuals who stood out from the crowd for one reason or another to change the world around them. This volume, perhaps Caro's masterpiece, as others have described it, is I believe first among equals among the greatest in my experience. It is less a biography than an epic, at times Homeric in its ability to get uncover the not so mysterious drive of its central character, the man who could make things happen, Robert Moses.
I wrote in my updates some of my feelings while reading it, and a life long New Yorker I felt that reading this book opened up the history and inner workings of my hometown in a way that no other story has done so far. I just can't believe I waited this long (40 years) to read it. Nonetheless, this is a GREAT book, it should be required reading , or at least parts of it , for all New Yorkers native or not, so that there next drive down the FDR or up the Henry Hudson Parkway , or their next visit to Jones Beach becomes not just a stream of cars on the way somewhere but a reconstruction of a time long ago when New York as it exists today did not exist. As damaged and dangerous as he was, Bob Moses created the New York that exists today, the good the bad and the ugly. His legacy is in millions of tons of concrete still connecting the boroughs together as well as the uglier and perhaps unnecessary damage done to people and neighborhoods and to city's fabric by his egomaniacal focus on getting things done.
If I could give Caro 6 stars I would !! ...more

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Aug 26, 2017 Conor Ahern rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook, biography, history, new-york, non-fiction, politics

It took me almost half of a year, but I did it--I finished "The Power Broker." In many ways, this book feels like the nonfiction "Infinite Jest," a rite of passage for all serious readers and a shibboleth of dilettante scholars of urban life such as myself. I feel accomplished!

Based on my reading history, it is not difficult to tell that I'm a bit of a mass transportation enthusiast. When I first moved to New York I lived on the Lower East Side, at the mercy of the unpredictable F an It took me almost half of a year, but I did it--I finished "The Power Broker." In many ways, this book feels like the nonfiction "Infinite Jest," a rite of passage for all serious readers and a shibboleth of dilettante scholars of urban life such as myself. I feel accomplished!

Based on my reading history, it is not difficult to tell that I'm a bit of a mass transportation enthusiast. When I first moved to New York I lived on the Lower East Side, at the mercy of the unpredictable F and erstwhile V trains, which usually didn't go where I wanted to go. So when I moved to Crown Heights thereafter and had either the 2/3/4/5 IRT lines or the IND Fulton C line at my disposal, it felt like the entirety of New York City had opened up to me, even as I decamped for the beginning of my continued foray into "Outer Borough" life. I left New York for law school and found my way back to Brooklyn, and I live in the neighborhood with the most subway options in the entire city, save Times Square, though the latter is more accurately described as a superterranean circle of Hell than a neighborhood. While my Brooklyn neighborhood has umpteen other charms, the subway options were why I moved here and they're a huge component of my decision to stay when I had to move earlier this year.

It's kind of weird to call yourself an enthusiast for the subways in a city where the favored pastime is measuring your weekly grievances against the MTA. It can't be denied that the system is outdated, poorly maintained, impossibly expensive, overcrowded, glitchy, dirty, and unreliable. But like the canals of Venice and the layout of Machu Picchu, imperfection does not preclude wonder. Due to a variety of geological, developmental, and riparian factors, New York is one of the most difficult and expensive places in the world to perform underground construction. Nevertheless, it has built a system that is one of the most expansive in the world when measured by number of stations, track mileage, or ridership.

Still, when you look at a spatially accurate map of the subway superimposed on the city, the lacunae are great--and greatly regrettable. Queens, almost entirely unpopulated until the early 20th Century, and therefore an excellent candidate for massive subway expansion, is only lightly dappled with subway access; huge swathes of outer Brooklyn, New York's most populous borough, are denied viable subway options; even gigantic portions of Manhattan are bereft, leading many to forget that the island has quite a bit of waistline extending beyond 8th Avenue. In the binary of subway access that has ensued, the rich tend to congregate around subway stops, while the poor and displaced--formerly locked into squalid city centers--have the difficulty of extended commutes and uncoordinated transfers added to their sizable burdens now that inner cities have become hypersafe playgrounds for the wealthy. Denizens of vehicular pseudo-suburbs in places like Queens, where subway access was repeatedly choked off, reap the advantages of the city without exposure to the shared living that urban life entails and which in turn fosters a sense of community and obligation, leading to curious redoubts of ethnic isolation, wealth, and conservatism in the world's most linguistically and ethnically diverse county.

Lest I expatiate on the subway any longer in a review of a book dealing mostly with roads and parks, I will try to get to the point: As much as I love the cheap and wide-ranging access of the tremendously flawed NYC subway system, I harbor an unusual wistfulness for its lost potential. New York runs the way it does because of the subway, and I wonder how many ills--hyperintense gentrification spurred whenever any reasonably-accessible neighborhood gets sufficiently safe, the criminalization of the working poor who cannot afford to commute, the pollution and diseconomies of space that car culture effect, etc.--could have been avoided or mitigated if subway access were truly comprehensive. To this end, I have spent untold hours mourning the failure of ambitious plans in the past, the provisions for connections optimistically but purposelessly built, the unrealized proposals of entirely new trunk lines articulated in a time when development and infrastructure did not make them prohibitively expensive. There are many, many factors to blame for these scuppered dreams, but the one that repeats like a mantra from students of New York's subway history is none other than this book's antihero: Robert Moses.

Moses, if nothing else, was a dynamo. He had superhuman intelligence, strength, will, confidence, and determination. Truly, one wonders were it not for his being Jewish in a more anti-Semitic age whether he would have become an elected official at the national level. He was born into wealthy circumstances and had all the advantages that wealth could endow, but aside from this huge thumb on the scale he was just a preternaturally magnetic, impressive, and capable person.

"The Power Broker" tells of Moses' idiosyncrasies and traits: his refusal to compromise, his mystifying ability to withstand the broadsides and enmities of mayors, governors, and even popular wartime presidents like FDR, and his primadonna tendencies. It explores the less than ethical and forthright ways in which Moses shored up and retained power, and his main tactic for building his mighty public works: over-promise on results, under-budget the costs, and prey on politicians' sense of failure to ensure that something once promised gets delivered, even if it requires multipliers of initial cost estimates. The book also alludes to Moses' racist and classist tendencies--his cooling by a few degrees of the temperatures of the public pools he built in white neighborhoods rimmed by pockets of Puerto Ricans and Blacks in the hope and under the impression that non-white people were constitutionally repelled by cool waters that whites were better able to endure; his quixotic war on Shakespeare in the Park, which he didn't believe poor people needed or could appreciate; and his busing and relatively meager accommodations for black New Yorkers. All in all, he seems to have been an impressive but unpleasant man who had an extremely particular and narrow view of what was best for the world and pursued the reification of that view with boundless zeal and undaunted determination.

And that's perhaps what is most striking about Moses. He was raised in the idealist tradition, by all accounts disproportionately influenced by his overbearing and talented mother and grandmother, who believed in social progress, but of a very specific type. Moses was not an evil man in most ways, he just really thought that landscaped roadways were the best ways to satisfy human needs for transportation while also giving "lungs" to the congested and miasmatic city. He didn't destroy entire swathes of the South Bronx out of spite, he did it because he believed that it was most conducive to the transit needs of the entirety of New York state. And much as it pains me to say it, when Moses refused to buy the right of way for future subway arteries in Queens, despite the knowledge that these rights of way would cost 10x as much a decade hence and using the cheeky excuse that doing so would put his project overbudget and destroy communities in the process, he did so because he earnestly believed that subways were a horrible way to travel, and that driving in a car was a luxury experience that should be--and someday would be--enjoyed by the great majority of New Yorkers. Being rich and too industrious to ever drive himself, he nurtured this mystifying view throughout his life, not really ever grasping the agony of a traffic jam or the pain of finding a parking spot in Lower Manhattan.

And so, just as I mourn the lost potential of the New York City subway system, I also mourn the lost potential of so powerful and impressive an individual as was Robert Moses, who could have achieved so much good if only he were instructed or sympathetic to the needs of a modern, global city. It is almost unquestionable that without a transit coordinator as powerful and hostile to subways as Moses was during that fecund period of subway construction, the subway network would be more expansive and suffer far less from the maladies attributed to it above. And imagine that, in addition to that barrier neutralized, what the system could look like in a world where Moses was its advocate! It's true that, having laid fallow in a time when the political will and practical possibility coexisted, so many plans for subway construction will likely never be resurrected. After all, New York's only really ambitious construction over the past few decades has been the 7 train extension--an addition of a single stop at a cost of over $1B, and the reinvigoration of the Second Avenue Subway, a line in the making for over a century that only just opened up its first three stops, and which is currently costing well over $2B per mile (the next closest rate is $400M per mile, the cost to construct subways in waterlogged Amsterdam) and not scheduled to be fully completed until likely the 2040s. While some think the completion of a portion of the Second Avenue line augurs well for future subway expansion, its difficulties, costs, and duration instead seem to signal that such ambitious projects need to be relegated to the realm of impossibility and impracticality. And this, sadly, as rapid bus services languish, as ferries fail to put a serious dent in ridership, and as rush hour trains go by 3, 4, 5, times before a passenger can squeeze on in increasingly bizarre positionings and uncomfortable proximities to complete strangers.

As I recall from Catholic school, the prophet Moses heralded the Savior. Perhaps we'll all be surprised and a savior of New York's mass transit woes will yet arrive. Until then, you can find me on the IND Lafayette Avenue local, lodged in a tunnel and waiting for an A express train to pass, wistfully wondering about what might have been... ...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Jay Oza rated it it was amazing

If there is one book you want read besides a religious book, I would make this that book.

We all have ideas, and very few of us ever even get to create a vision, but unless you have the power, it will go nowhere. For example, Steve Jobs didn't get Apple to be #1 because they out innovated others. It was because he had power. If you want to understand power, read this book, since it is so well written and researched. You get the feeling that Caro knew Moses better than he.

< ...more

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Sep 24, 2019 Sharon Barrow Wilfong rated it it was amazing

This book is a very long, thorough, exhaustive and phenomenal account of the man who made the public works systems and housing and parks in New York City what they are today. It deservedly won the author the Nobel Prize for literature.

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Robert Moses grew up in a household run by his mother, who had extremely fierce opinions about fighting for the underdog. She raised her children to think like her, at least she expected them to. Robert Moses did, his bro ...more

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Oct 03, 2007 Jerry Raviol rated it liked it

Although many folks know he is responsible for parks, bridges, roads, and tunnels - did you know that he reformed the budget system for the state of New York? Did you know that he was an Ivy League do gooder that never had a real paying job until he was more than 30 years old? Did you know that he spent his entire young adulthood trying to reform government? Did you know that the man most responsible for the highway, bridges, and tunnels of NYC, never had a driver’s license? He was chauffer driv ...more

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Aug 30, 2014 Max rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-history

The ultimate in investigative reporting - a history so well written, so thorough, so deep and with so many takeaways that it is beyond thought provoking. It changes the way you perceive the world. Caro shows how money, politics and power work behind the scenes to determine events in ways we ordinarily never see. He meticulously details a half century of greed and ambition ever evolving to control government from one generation to the next, from one set of power brokers to the next.

We learn how The ultimate in investigative reporting - a history so well written, so thorough, so deep and with so many takeaways that it is beyond thought provoking. It changes the way you perceive the world. Caro shows how money, politics and power work behind the scenes to determine events in ways we ordinarily never see. He meticulously details a half century of greed and ambition ever evolving to control government from one generation to the next, from one set of power brokers to the next.

We learn how Robert Moses begins with values, ideals and dreams, with ambition and drive. As he pushes his new ideas forward he runs into the establishment, an entrenched society based on wealth and connections. His only way forward is to compromise, to manipulate the system the same way the establishment does. He then tastes power and it becomes his crack cocaine. His fix is facilitated by playing up to or paying off those he needs, rewarding those who fall in line, humiliating and ruining those in his way and forgetting the rest. Money, intimidation, threats, lies and deceit get things done. His dreams survive, but his values don’t. Robert Moses’ story exposes the raw nature of politics and its practitioners revealing a stark brutal reality.

While the author belabors some points, Caro’s biography never ceases to be enthralling and it always feels authentic. FDR, Nelson Rockefeller, Fiorello La Gaurdia, Al Smith, and every other politician that had anything to do with New York from 1920 to 1970 is there. And we are there, witnessing corruption of both the body politic and the human spirit. We live through the fascinating life of the ruthless genius who built so much of modern New York. We follow him from the bottom to the top and down to the bottom again. We see how generational ideals outlive their relevance in a rapidly changing world and how power based on new paradigms replaces old. But the game stays the same. The times and people change. The politics and human nature don’t.
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Feb 13, 2011 Steven Peterson rated it it was amazing

1162 pages of well researched text is what Robert Caro uses to tell the story of planner and political power Robert Moses. Over decades of service, Moses reshaped New York (both the city and the state) and other public structures. He began as a reformer; over time, he arrogated more and more power to himself--and still remained rather out of sight as a figure. He used his power sometimes unconcerned about the implications for citizens. The Cross-Bronx Expressway, for instance, displaced many peo ...more

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Jul 27, 2017 Christopher Saunders rated it it was amazing

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-nonfiction, favorites, 2017-reads

The Power Broker is Robert A. Caro's first book, and despite the brilliance of his Years of Lyndon Johnson series, it's still his best. Ostensibly a biography of Robert Moses, the building and public works commissioner of New York from the '20s through 1969, it's many things: a detailed account of urban planning and inner-city strife, a sweeping chronicle of New York politics and official wrangling, a study of the impact of indifferent government and careless bureaucrats on everyday lives. As wi ...more

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Aug 01, 2018 Ben rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, politics

An epic story of Robert Moses's career spent transforming the New York area, especially in parks, bridges, roads and housing. Moses built on an incredible scale. Certainly he made terrible, irremediable mistakes, but he did get things done, beyond what anyone else has done before or since.

The blow-by-blow details of how Moses got things done, accumulating and maintaining power, ensconcing himself as the unaccountable head of the Triborough Bridge Authority as well as around a dozen other city a An epic story of Robert Moses's career spent transforming the New York area, especially in parks, bridges, roads and housing. Moses built on an incredible scale. Certainly he made terrible, irremediable mistakes, but he did get things done, beyond what anyone else has done before or since.

The blow-by-blow details of how Moses got things done, accumulating and maintaining power, ensconcing himself as the unaccountable head of the Triborough Bridge Authority as well as around a dozen other city and state positions, are fascinating. Although initially an idealist reformer, even working without taking a salary, Moses is soon corrupted---not so much by money for himself, although he enjoyed perks and luxury, as by whatever it took, including money, to control others. He battles with mayors, governors, even President FDR, and is only taken down by Governor Nelson Rockefeller (whose unique advantages included being of the family controlling Chase Manhattan Bank, which was the trustee for the Triborough bonds, and who manages to trick Moses into allowing his authority to be merged into a larger transit authority with no role for Moses). He takes what levers he has, and uses them (for example, knowing future road routes is quite useful for a local politician, to profit from development instead of fighting it). Moses defends his own position (e.g., keeping files on everyone). Moses is arrogant and does not like the public, and his reputation is eventually destroyed as he futilely battles the press---while still maintaining his power.

Moses himself is less interesting a character than Caro's other biography subject, LBJ. Moses ages poorly, becoming a deaf old codger. Having surrounded himself with yes-men, he is unable to recognize that New York's problems have changed. Traffic won't be solved by another bridge or a cross-town expressway. Mass transit is needed, but Moses is fixedly opposed to mass transit (not only refusing to build it, or to reserve some space along his parkways for future transit---but deliberately trying to frustrate transit by, for example, making the overpasses too low for buses). Moses is narrow-minded. He never learns to drive and for his whole life he thinks of driving as a recreational activity for the wealthy. He is severely racist, and would like to keep the poor away from his parks. He is in my opinion much less perspicacious than Caro tries to argue. He is not a sympathetic figure. The tragedy is not Moses, but the victims of his housing condemnations (often made for corrupt reasons) and, especially, the major development mistakes he made in laying out Long Island parkways to encourage sprawl.

The book is occasionally repetitive and drawn-out. It could probably be edited to half the length. But why would you want it to be? The story, and the writing, are fantastic. ...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, economics, history, politics, favorites, read-in-2010

This is a six star book. I read it after having hoovered up Caro's LBJ series, and while nothing to me can equal those for sheer writing power, this comes damn close. Like those books, this is exhaustively researched and sourced from an unimaginable number of archival documents and personal interviews. Like those books, it is the study of a man who loved power more than anything, and whose most minor whims have consequences that echo to this day. Like those books, its depth seems to encompass th This is a six star book. I read it after having hoovered up Caro's LBJ series, and while nothing to me can equal those for sheer writing power, this comes damn close. Like those books, this is exhaustively researched and sourced from an unimaginable number of archival documents and personal interviews. Like those books, it is the study of a man who loved power more than anything, and whose most minor whims have consequences that echo to this day. Like those books, its depth seems to encompass the whole world, with innumerable fascinating asides and brief sketches of tangents that could be turned into book in themselves. Like those books, it is incredibly well-written; the cause of many sleepless nights trying to get in "just a few more pages". I'll say that while it took a bit longer to get sucked into the Northeastern world of this guy who built bridges and parks than it did into the more familiar Texas of LBJ, Caro is such a great writer that I was glad I stuck with it. There are so many great themes at work here: the power of will and determination and genius in a world of mediocrity, the conflict between democracy and "getting things done", the effects of power on the powerless, the sad longing for (literally) roads not taken, the difference between Carlyle's and Hegel's versions of history... it's the story of how America became the car-addicted, sprawl-infested society we are today and what happens to little people when powerful people treat their homes and their lives like Monopoly pieces. This is one of those books that takes such a deep look at society that no matter what you thought about our country before, you'll think something different after you're done. This is the book to read if you're interested in Robert Moses, the history of New York City, or of urban planning, or the creation of the idea of suburbia, or a million other details of life in the first half of the twentieth century, when the whole world looked to New York as the place where the future had just arrived ten minutes ago. ...more

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Oct 17, 2018 Susan rated it it was amazing

I've already read the first 4 volumes of Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography--and loved them. I knew, from my sister's recommendation, that The Power Broker was Caro's first formulation of his fascination with power. In retirement I had time to read it, though, I confess, I listened to the audio book. But that was 80 hours long. I'm been listening part of the time on my daily walks of an hour or so, but also when I'm knitting, cooking, doing household chores. It's addictive, as indeed a book with 13 I've already read the first 4 volumes of Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography--and loved them. I knew, from my sister's recommendation, that The Power Broker was Caro's first formulation of his fascination with power. In retirement I had time to read it, though, I confess, I listened to the audio book. But that was 80 hours long. I'm been listening part of the time on my daily walks of an hour or so, but also when I'm knitting, cooking, doing household chores. It's addictive, as indeed a book with 1300 some pages has to be addictive. Caro is addictive, largely because of the extensive research he does which results in so much detail. In the Lyndon Johnson biography, when LBJ first went to Congress and decided his project would be to bring electricity to the Texas Hill Country, Caro devoted a whole long chapter to what it was like (for women particularly) to live without electricity, especially with rural America mostly had electricity already.

I loved this one too. Having just finished it, I was surprised how much I felt for Robert Moses in the end and how much I appreciated the intellect and the energy of a man who, a few days ago, I'd been reviling. He was really a towering intellect. As a young man he conquered challenges easily, first Yale and then Oxford. He finally did a PhD at Columbia. He was a reformer and an idealist and his focus was on parks. Early on he imagined having changing stations in the parks so mothers could change their babies.

He never really went looking for a job though. His mother financed him well into his adulthood, when he married and had children. It was only much later when he had "official positions" with the city that he had a salary of his own. Money didn't motivate him, at least not having it himself. Whatever he did, it was power he wanted, not personal wealth. And he ended up having to buy his own stamps!

As a very young man he came up with plans to reorganize the Parks Department, based on current efficiency theories but was laughed at. Finally it became clear to him that he couldn't demote people in droves, not in the Depression in a city where jobs came as patronage and where salaries reflected loyalty to bosses. Moses initially had little use for Mayor Al Smith, until he began to notice how effectively Smith ran the city and how much power he had. (The book even has chapters on how Smith learned about political power from Belle Moskovitiz, a reformer, settlement worker, and labor mediator who became a force in Democratic politics and who taught him how to use power. He offered her jobs but she preferred to be his unofficial advisor.) At first Moses tended to look down on the uneducated Al Smith, but eventually he realized the mayor knew something he didn't about getting things done. When he asked Smith's advice, he was referred to Belle and he listened and learned. Al Smith became not only a colleague but a friend and he never addressed another mayor as Mayor. That title was reserved for Smith, even long after his death.

Moses had always known what to do. He just didn't know how to do it until he listened to Al Smith. One piece of advice he was given had to the with the power of whoever wrote the bills the legislature in Albany voted on (a lesson Al Smith had had to learn). And Moses became that person. It allowed him to draft legislation that would not only pass but which would benefit the Parks Department and himself. Moses acquired loyal followers himself, including those who could help him finance his projects as well as build them.

His first big success was Jones Beach which he not only turned into an attractive park but realized that it needed roads so that people in the city could get there. He built roads, many of which he designated as "parkways" which allowed him to include them in his many parks for funding purposes.

When Moses started he was an idealist and a reformer. He became a skilled politician (this was the age of Tammany after all) and slowly as his power grew, power was more important to him than the purpose of the projects. He'd always dealt with people who owned the land he wanted for parks, or access roads. At first he wasn't very successful with the owners of the estates on the north side of Long Island. In one project where he hadn't the power to put a road through the land of rich people, he condemned part of the land of a small farmer, in fact, the middle of the land so that the farm wouldn't be profitable any more. He seemed to give no thought to the farmer and his family.

In spite of the fact that he saw as his mission building parks for everyone, powerful citizens typically got better deals from him . When one of his roads had to go on private property, he typically chose neighborhoods where the homeowners were powerless. He wasn't derelicts he was forcing out but owners of small homes. He also quite obviously discriminated against Jews and blacks. He never worried that blacks in the slums had no way to get to his parks.

In the 50ies, at the height of his powers, he moved into Title 1 slum clearance projects and paid absolutely no attention to the low income tenants he removed. On one project he promised help relocating people (which never got done) and forced many of the tenants he displaced into slums. Caro tells these stories in detail. He tracked down people who'd been moved out of condemned properties years before and listened to their stories and then told them in this book. On one project there was an alternative route for the highway going in which was absolutely viable, yet Moses refused to change it even though it would save the homes of more than half of the people he was evicting.

In the 60ies there were lawsuits trying to stop his projects, but by then he'd accumulated so much power that even the lawyers didn't realize how impossible it was to change his mind. Finally he was publicly embarrassed at protests by mothers because the part of Central Park where their children played was being paved for a parking lot. No one could believe that the idealistic Park Commissioner could be so unfeeling. It was a small loss for Moses, but his image had been tarnished because of the publicity.

By then it was clear that Moses and his huge network of highways and parkways and bridges was not really going to be the answer to NY's traffic problems, particularly Long Island's traffic problems. Every time a new road was added, traffic got worse not better. Moses had always refused to make accommodations for mass transit in his schemes, leave room for extra lanes in the middle of a highway that might eventually become a train, include train stations in his future plans. It was even discovered when the idea of putting bus lanes in the center of the Long Island parkways came up, that Moses had not left enough clearance for a bus to negotiate an exit or entrance. And that he'd done it purposely. (Moses never drove a car, had always used a chauffeur-driven limousine. His roads had been built to make access to parks easy. One of his main early goals was to get rid of railroad crossings. He no longer really knew the people who used his roads and bridges.)

Moses was forced out when he was 78 years old. And only then because the governor was Nelson Rockefeller whose brother headed up the last huge bank in the US that was still family controlled. Chase Manhattan. ...more

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Jun 19, 2017 Alex Linschoten rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, history

One million words. More.

The Power Broker is the kind of book you see in a bookshop, pick it up, put it back down again because its weight is a physical assault on your wrist.

It isn't available as a digital edition for Kindle, so you're stuck with lugging the physical copy around with you. I started this book in February, setting up a Beeminder goal to keep me on track. The pages are large and the type small, so even a goal of reading twenty pages a day took 30-45 minutes. ...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Jeff Joseph rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

WOW, WOW, OH MY GOD, This is one of those books that has you calling everyone you know telling them how they must read this book. Its absolutely mind boggling,facinating, amazing and really quite scary what this evil genius accomplished. Truth is SO much stranger than fiction! This is one of those books where your a different person when you finish the book then when you start(,and thats not due to the time factor involved in reading this big ass sucker)

For many years Ive been noticing this s ...more

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Apr 30, 2019 Rachel Kowal rated it really liked it

4.47 stars

Is Caro’s writing manipulative? Yes. But it’s also pretttty impressive considering the immensity of the project he was undertaking. And, okay, I like to be manipulated sometimes.

It’s hard to sum up this 1200+ page book (the longest I’ve ever read). Often Moses is made out to be a monster, while other times he is deeply pitiable. At just 24 hours out now from having finished this, I don’t know how to feel about him. Am I annoyed more money wasn’t earmarked for public transp ...more

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Sep 30, 2016 Saeed rated it really liked it

Shelves: iron-power

The Power Broker or a broke person :)

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Feb 14, 2011 Jeremy rated it it was amazing

If you only read one 1162-page book this year... read this one. Wow. Having just finished this, it's hard to say which achievement is more monumental: Robert Moses's commandeering of New York's byzantime infrastructure to serve his own ambitious vision--the book makes an open-and-shut case for Moses, whom many have never heard of and never served in public elected office, being the most important and powerful man in the history of New York--or Robert Caro's ability to write a definitive biograph ...more

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Feb 14, 2016 Taylor Pearson rated it really liked it

Shelves: business, history, foundational, politics-social-commentary

At the time The Power Broker came out in the 1970s, everyone agreed with Caro’s impression that Moses was “a mean son of a bitch” and responsible for the Fall of New York.

He was overtly classist and racist, building bridges unnecessarily low over his parkways to prevent buses, and the less wealthy people who rode them, from using his parkways.

At some points, Moses comes across as an alpha gorilla, taunting his superiority in another gorillas face, just to show he can. ...more

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Jan 21, 2018 Daniel Polansky added it

Shelves: keep

Since I first came to New York, I was looking out for a coup of Cairo's beloved biography of city builder/ruiner Robert Moses, which, half a century after its first printing, remains so popura that it literally took me five years of searching to find a copy of this massive, million word tome that didn’t cost 30$. It came too late. By the time I finally found one, and by the time I got around to reading the one I had found, I was getting ready to say goodbye to New York, putting my cheap furnitur Since I first came to New York, I was looking out for a coup of Cairo's beloved biography of city builder/ruiner Robert Moses, which, half a century after its first printing, remains so popura that it literally took me five years of searching to find a copy of this massive, million word tome that didn’t cost 30$. It came too late. By the time I finally found one, and by the time I got around to reading the one I had found, I was getting ready to say goodbye to New York, putting my cheap furniture onto the stoop and saying whistful farewells to old watering holes. The 1200 very large pages of this tomes thus became a trial, an unhappy and despairing reminder of a place I loved and hated and am in any event leaving, of the endless catalog of errors that I made during my time here, of the occasional moments of happiness, more bitter still than my mistakes.
So, with the substantial caveat that my reading The Power Broker was an enormously elaborate exorcise in masochism, both figurative and literal (I consider myself something of a pack horse but having this brick in my backpack for last two weeks was half-crippling), what did I think of it? I thought it was too fucking long. Yup, that’s what I thought. It’s just too goddamn long. Moses was a fascinating figure and his impact on New York was enormous, but for a casual reader a lot of this stuff could be condensed. The beginning of the book, chronicling Moses’s transition from honest reformer to the power mad monster, is interesting, but once he makes that switch (around 1935, or so) the narrative starts to feel pretty repetitive. There’s something very personal to this biography – Cairo has a real sense of the injustices committed by Moses during his concrete transformation of New York, and a desire to tell the long untold stories of his victims. But it’s the same story, mostly, Moses using the powers he carefully accumulated and the indifference of the city and state elite to destroy nice things in New York and replace them with upper class amenities and hideous highways. Which is terrible and everything but basically it’s the same story whether its East Tremont or the Throggs Neck bridge or whatever, political chicanery leading to the eradication of natural beauty and the destruction of all things good. Will I keep it? No, I’m not gonna fucking keep it, it’s heavy as sin and I’m through with New York anyway, man, I’m done, I’m gone, you gone have her, I don’t miss her, I won’t think about her at night, I won’t count her hideous flaws as secret virtues, I won’t let her grit down in my soul. Editors Note: Nah, fuck it, I'm keeping this one. ...more

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May 16, 2015 Eric rated it it was amazing

When I was reading Caro's series of books on LBJ, I would, of course, recommend them. They're great. A lot of people, though, would ask, "Why would you want to read about him?" I guess their thinking was, LBJ wasn't one of the presidents we hold up as heroes. LBJ is a problematic character to get your head around. He was as much a villain as a hero.

But that's the fun of history, isn't it? Reading about how consequential deeds often go hand in hand with black motives. Or how pure moti ...more

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Feb 23, 2015 Aaron Million rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-history, biography

Monumental work by Robert Caro - now more widely known for his excellent (and still ongoing) series of biographies on Lyndon Johnson. But this book launched his career, and reading it allows one to see why. Exhaustively researched, Caro leaves no stone unturned in his dual biography of Moses and New York City from the 1920s-1960s. As he has done with the LBJ books, Caro interviewed everyone that he could find who was remotely affiliated with, or affected by, Moses in any way. The result is a mas Monumental work by Robert Caro - now more widely known for his excellent (and still ongoing) series of biographies on Lyndon Johnson. But this book launched his career, and reading it allows one to see why. Exhaustively researched, Caro leaves no stone unturned in his dual biography of Moses and New York City from the 1920s-1960s. As he has done with the LBJ books, Caro interviewed everyone that he could find who was remotely affiliated with, or affected by, Moses in any way. The result is a masterful biography.

So many politically powerful men appear in this book: FDR, Dewey, Lehman, La Guardia, Nelson Rockefeller, Al Smith. Moses was in power for so long (essentially, 1924-1968; officially, 1934-1968) that he tangled with everyone who had a say in how NYC or the state of New York was run. His imprint on the region is still felt today thanks to the many parks, bridges, expressways, and parkways that Moses had built. Many of those are not going away anytime soon.

So why only four stars? As much as I enjoy Caro's writing style, I sensed that here he focused so closely on Moses that he excluded everyone else at times. Sort of like a moth getting too close to a burning candle, it gets engulfed in the flame, Caro seemed to think that all of NYC operated solely around Robert Moses. I doubt that was the case. Many of the people that he had fights with were heavyweights in their own rights. While Caro makes a tight case for Moses being a dominating force, he did not win every battle that he fought, and eventually his power began to wane as he over-reached himself starting in the mid-1950s. Caro fails to mention this, but I cannot help but think that, once Moses was duped out of his Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority chairmanship, one of the reasons that he was not able to regain power is due to how poorly he treated so many people for so long: running roughshod over them, failing to even consider alternate or competing points of view, talking down and arrogantly towards others. He had to have created a substantial amount of hostility amongst many people, but Caro does not touch on this possible aspect.

Grade: A- ...more

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Apr 08, 2017 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it it was amazing

‘One measure of the career of Robert Moses is longevity. His power was measured in decades .’

Robert Moses (18 December 1888 – 29 July 1981) was, for over forty years, the most powerful public official in New York. This was despite the fact that he was never elected to public office. At one stage, he held twelve titles (including NYC Parks Commissioner and Chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission). Some of the public authorities he led (some of which he created) had such a hi ‘One measure of the career of Robert Moses is longevity. His power was measured in decades .’

Robert Moses (18 December 1888 – 29 July 1981) was, for over forty years, the most powerful public official in New York. This was despite the fact that he was never elected to public office. At one stage, he held twelve titles (including NYC Parks Commissioner and Chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission). Some of the public authorities he led (some of which he created) had such a high degree of autonomy from official scrutiny that he controlled millions of dollars with limited (if any) accountability. He was able to issue bonds to borrow huge amounts for new projects with limited (in any) input from legislative bodies.

‘The city might own the Triborough Bridge, but only the Triborough Bridge Authority could run it .’

In this book, which won both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parker Prizes, Robert Caro writes about how Robert Moses developed and applied his power. Robert Moses began as a reformer, over time he became an emperor. His public authorities operated as an unaccountable branch of government, controlling both state governors and mayors. How he did this makes for fascinating reading.

‘Parks, highways, urban renewal—Robert Moses was in and of himself a formative force in all three fields in the United States .’

I read that Robert Moses personally conceived and completed public works which cost 27 billion dollars. An incredible achievement. Those works included the Jones Beach, Fire Island, and Bethpage Parks, the Triborough, Throgs Neck, Henry Hudson, and Bronx-Whitestone Bridges, the Major Deegan, the Van Wyck, and the Long Island Expressways. But at what cost? Many people in New York were displaced by some of his expressway projects. Several of the bridges he built were not tall enough to enable buses to travel on the roads beneath them. Public transport was not a priority for Robert Moses, and consequently many people were unable to use some of the public recreation facilities he built.

‘When he replied to protests about the hardships caused by his roadbuilding programs, he generally replied that succeeding generations would be grateful. It was the end that counted, not the means .’

I came across Robert Moses in a book I was reading some years ago about New York. This book was recommended to me and while it’s taken me a while, I’m glad I read it. Mr Caro has provided a well-researched, easy to read account of Robert Moses and his power.

Students of public administration should read this book. As Lord Acton wrote in 1887: ‘Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely’.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
...more

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Apr 18, 2014 Jonathan rated it it was amazing

Robert Caro is the greatest written story teller of the last 100 years.

This book is well worth the 1161 page investment. I guarantee you will love this book.

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Jul 03, 2019 Thomas Simpson rated it it was amazing

Literally nobody:

Me this past month: You ever heard about Robert Moses?

A few months ago, I watched Ric Burns’ “New York: A Documentary Film” and was surprised by much of the content in the episodes concerning the 20th century. No slouch in history, I felt blindsided by the fact these episodes spent so much time discussing the life and work of Robert Moses, a man I had never previously heard of. Awed by the scale of Moses’ achievements from this documentary, I decided to p Literally nobody:

Me this past month: You ever heard about Robert Moses?

A few months ago, I watched Ric Burns’ “New York: A Documentary Film” and was surprised by much of the content in the episodes concerning the 20th century. No slouch in history, I felt blindsided by the fact these episodes spent so much time discussing the life and work of Robert Moses, a man I had never previously heard of. Awed by the scale of Moses’ achievements from this documentary, I decided to pick up Robert Caro’s The Power Broker- having also heard that the scale of Caro’s research was equally awesome. In this, my summer of Big Books, the Power Broker become my follow up to reading War and Peace. And if War and Peace rekindled a love and appreciation for literature, the Power Broker reignited a passion for history I didn’t even know had gone out.

In short, The Power Broker is probably the greatest history book/biography I’ve ever read. It has earned this distinction for the following reasons:

1. It made me feel like I was losing my history virginity all over again. This might be entirely subjective but reading this story about a historical figure I’d never heard about, presented with so much loving detail and context made me feel like I was a kid learning about the great figures of history for the first time. Of course this book isn’t just about Moses. It’s about Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia, Nelson Rockefeller and dozens of other big and small historical figures, their vaulting ambitions and their petty rivalries. On top of this “Great Man” history, the Power Broker is also a magnificent social history, giving voice to the thousands, if not millions, of people whose everyday lives were utterly transformed, usually for the worse, by Robert Moses’ projects. On TOP of that, the Power Broker is a gorgeous history of the landscape of New York City and Long Island. You will not forget the passages Caro devotes to discussing such landmarks as Jones Beach, the Central Park Zoo, Battery Park — to say nothing of the great behemoths of the Cross Bronx Expressway and Triborough.

2. It made me feel like a real adult. I saw another review on Goodreads basically say the same thing. More than any other book I’ve read, the Power Broker made me feel like I really was learning the machinery of how “the system” works. At its heart, the Power Broker is a 1200 page book with tiny print that is primarily concerned with bureaucratic maneuvering and infrastructure. And while there are some sections of the book that suffer for the density and complexity of these topics, overall this book is a page turner. Caro is able to make these incredibly dry, adult subjects seem sexy - if not because of the star power of New York City and its landmarks - then because at all times Caro is concerned with documenting the human cost of public works and “urban renewal”. You will read this book and shed a tear for the tragic decisions that doomed millions of New Yorkers (and Americans in general) to spend countless hours of their lives stuck in endlessly congested traffic. You will read this book and shed even more tears for the tragic decisions that condemned neighborhoods wholesale to social collapse, or worse, be outright torn down for the sake of highways. You will read these things and you will know what being a grown up is.

3. Robert Moses is one of the great “love to hate him” villains of all nonfiction. Short of the obvious despots and dictators, history books can be lacking in larger than life villains. No doubt Robert Moses was not a mass murderer. The closest he comes to this type of historical villain was by running his multiple agencies and authorities with the workaholic tyranny one associates with Napoleon (Moses’ own Elba was his Empire on Randalls Island). More aptly, Moses comes across as a cartoon villain scheming of grandiose ways to accumulate power and get back at his enemies (real and perceived). I’m picturing a Sindely Whiplash tying women to railroad tracks or a Mr Burns deciding to steal candy from a baby after blocking out the sun. So much of what makes this book a page turner owes itself to how deliciously petty and vindictive Moses was (see: tearing down the beloved Battery Aquarium as revenge for being told he had to build a tunnel instead of a bridge.) And yet it’s also trivializing to view his wickedness only in cartoonish terms. Caro walks a fine line to point out that the flip side to Moses’ brilliance and drive to accomplish was his lust for power and, even more damning, racism and disregard for anything and anyone that got in his way. The chapter about how he mistreated his family was heartbreaking but no less heartbreaking than his callous destruction of the Sunset Park and East Tremont neighborhoods.

4. This book is the greatest conversation starter ever. Read this book in public and somebody will invariably come up to you and talk to you about it. People you know and strangers alike. They’ll say that they’ve heard it’s an amazing book or that they read it and know it’s an amazing book. You will hear from people who love what Robert Moses built. You will hear from people who loathe Robert Moses, dead now for almost 40 years. This has never happened to me reading any other book and I wonder if it will ever happen again. It’s been one hell of an experience.
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Oct 24, 2017 Emma Jiang is currently reading it

The power broker

Ch1. P25-P37 (Day 2 : 04-10-2018)

Strong-willed is the common traits shared by Grannie, Bella and Robert Moses. Though they showed them in different way, shape or form. It really amuses me that how old ladies use the elbow technique to jump into the line as the first to buy ticket. It is quite interesting that the comparison between Bella's soft-spoken personality and her direct , sort of anti-permissive management style. Robert got spoiled by his mother i ...more

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Feb 01, 2019 Steve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: tbb-master

https://thebestbiographies.com/2019/0...

ublished in 1974, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” was Robert Caro’s first book – and earned him the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Caro is best known for his ongoing series covering the life of Lyndon B. Johnson. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for the third volume (“Master of the Senate”) and is currently working on the fifth – and presumably final – book in the series.

“The Power Broker” is notable both for what it is – a monumental investigati https://thebestbiographies.com/2019/0...

ublished in 1974, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” was Robert Caro’s first book – and earned him the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Caro is best known for his ongoing series covering the life of Lyndon B. Johnson. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for the third volume (“Master of the Senate”) and is currently working on the fifth – and presumably final – book in the series.

“The Power Broker” is notable both for what it is – a monumental investigative work and piercing exploration of a fascinating personality – and what it is not – an easy-to-digest narrative intended for the casual fan of great biography. This 1,162-page book is hefty but engrossing, detailed but illuminating and unquestionably demands more patience and perseverance than most biographies.

Readers familiar with Caro’s series on LBJ will find his writing style strikingly familiar: penetrating and potent but not particularly elegant and frequently dense but rarely dull. And given Caro’s knack for uncovering and piecing together various elements of his subject’s life, his background as an investigative reporter is hardly surprising.

This biography starts off somewhat slowly but once it is running at full steam (after about two-hundred pages) it is almost inexplicably enthralling. Robert Moses is not someone familiar to most readers, but Caro’s biography carefully tracks each phase of his uniquely consequential life – his rise to power, the decades he spent exercising that power and his eventual fall. At times this is as much a study of power as of Robert Moses.

There are too many excellent moments to comprehensively chronicle, but among the best are the chapter outlining Moses’ early vision for the development of Long Island, the review of his rise to power in New York City, descriptions of the ongoing tension between Moses and Franklin Roosevelt and the examination of Moses’ involvement in the Central Park Zoo and Triborough Bridge projects.

Caro also provides excellent introductions to important supporting characters such as Al Smith, Fiorello La Guardia and Nelson Rockefeller. And the chapter dedicated to describing a typical work day for Moses near the peak of his power, including his strategy for entertaining guests and dignitaries, is one of the book’s best.

This book’s few weaknesses are not well-hidden. The narrative rarely hurries to get to the heart of a matter and paragraphs routinely consume most of a page. Lacking both efficiency and a colorful fluidity, this is not a carefree read. In addition, Moses’ early years elapse far too quickly and his personal life proves elusive. But because his life revolved almost entirely around his career, this imbalance is unsurprising if unfortunate.

Overall, Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” is an incredibly interesting, uncommonly penetrating and unquestionably demanding biography of one of New York’s most consequential public figures. Anyone seeking a casual biographical experience will find this book weighty and intense. But readers seeking a a fascinating story about a surprisingly compelling subject (and underpinned by meticulous research) will find few better biographies than this.

Overall rating: 4½ stars ...more

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May 30, 2011 Josh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, new-york, nonfiction, politics, pulitzer-non-fiction

Finally finished with this ridiculously long but incredible book about urban power and politics. It's terrifically thorough despite omitting several stories about the late years in Moses' career (presumably because of simple length considerations, and the recency of those events at the date of publication). So even at 1162 pages, I actually wouldn't have minded it being longer. Of course the subject and the story are so thoroughly compelling. Robert Moses did some amazing and amazingly terrible ...more

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Apr 03, 2015 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: audible

Robert Moses was a right bastard, that's for sure.

Caro must be completely immune to the usual biographer's dilemma of developing too great an affection for his subject to be able to write impartially. (Or - this incredibly damning work IS the soft version!)

As a Long Island girl, it's impossible for me to conceive of what my home would have looked like, would have been like without Robert Moses' great constructions but reading this book made me long for a time machine, mad ...more

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Sep 01, 2015 Josh Friedlander rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-history, geography-urban-planning

An astonishingly in-depth, erudite and comprehensive (fun fact: the author's senior thesis at Princeton was so long that the university decided to institute a length limit in future) portrait of a man who shaped New York City. Brilliant and haughty, Moses used his supple mind to gain power and implement his plans beyond the reach of public or political influence. Caro shows his subject's great strengths - a love of public service, political astuteness, and an incredible work ethic - as well as h ...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Dewey rated it it was amazing

It took me 8 months to read this brilliant
bio of the public works titan, Robert Moses. Caro, the author, who won a Pulitzer Prize for this, and became much better known through his series on LBJ, deserves all the accolades he receives. He has spent his career as a writer profiling people who amass power, documenting what they are willing to do to acquire, wield, maintain, and ultimately lose power--- in this regard Moses is as an apt a subject as LBJ.

Moses was pushed into government It took me 8 months to read this brilliant
bio of the public works titan, Robert Moses. Caro, the author, who won a Pulitzer Prize for this, and became much better known through his series on LBJ, deserves all the accolades he receives. He has spent his career as a writer profiling people who amass power, documenting what they are willing to do to acquire, wield, maintain, and ultimately lose power--- in this regard Moses is as an apt a subject as LBJ.

Moses was pushed into government service by his mother, and kept an iron hand over New York's infrastructure for four decades. The Triborough Bridge, Randalls Island, Jones Beach, tens of bridges, hundreds of parks, and thousands of miles of roads were a result of his simultaneous expansive and myopic vision. This vision for New York City that Moses relished was predicated on a car culture that eventually ceased being useful but to which he was unable to adjust. This vision proved capable of both modernizing New York and ruining it, for the displaced families forced to move to accommodate his expressways, to the acres of concrete jungle that sometimes constituted his parks.

This dialectic of mastering and shaping the environment, beyond the scale of nature, while destroying the scale of nature's natural beauty, overshadows the narrative of how Moses came to power. At one time holding 12 separate state and municipal positions in New York simultaneously, Moses encased himself in a bureaucracy that only he could lead. Financing the Triborough authority and writing the laws that governed its uses, Moses held control over a $300 million dollar source of revenue that could entice Federal, city and state to comply with his vision of what New York should look like. And, if any leader in New York wanted to announce public works, and they all did--- His idol Al Smith, La Guardia, his antagonist Roosevelt, Rockefeller--they were beholden to him.

His story shows the potential downside of public service, for he was at times bully, a racist, and a conniver. Yet, the degree and scale with which Moses got things done is impressive. He shaped New York for better and worse, and I will never think about why it takes so long to get to Long Island in the same way again.

Highly recommend to all!

For more reviews and lots else visit: timeisrhythm.wix.com/home ...more

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Oct 13, 2008 Nick Black rated it liked it

Shelves: incredibly-large

Amazon, 2008-10-13.

Something about Caro's writing is really irritating me, and I can't put my finger on it. The characters thus far are awesome, though. I wish I had more time to be putting into it :/.
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2013-09-13 picked this back up a few days ago, after reading Caro's LBJ books last year. started over from the beginning. really wondering how Caro is going to justify the remaining ~500 pages, though the first 500 were pretty damn good.
---

Searching the ...more

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