The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York Review

What more can be said about this book? For over 1,100 pages, it captured my attention. I cannot recall one moment when I wasn't excited to pick the book up and dive into the story.

Caro paints the whole picture. He begins before Moses was even born. You'll learn about Moses' family -- his henpecked father (even Moses later thinks this) and his headstrong and brilliant mother. You then get to see Moses as a student at Yale where he's a poetic virtuoso and admirer of Samuel Johnson. Indeed, later in the story when Moses is in nearly the full swing of his power, he quotes Johnson during a speech to compliment (but really insult) a certain politician -- as Caro tells it, it's one of my favorite parts of the book.

You see Moses the idealist -- starry eyed and seemingly a proponent of all things good -- swept under the wings of Al Smith and Belle Moskowitz, some of the most fascinating personalities in the book. At this point, the story takes off. Moses gets the press on his side and never really looses them for 40 years. Still, one gets the sense that the poet within Moses never really left him, despite his gruffness and outward toughness. He's labeled the "best bill drafter in Albany" -- one of the major reasons he was able to accumulate so much power -- because he had a poet's way with words. Amazingly, we learn that Moses wrote at least one novel under a pen name. Later on, Moses comes full circle by writing literary criticism for a Newsday.

Moses was inspiring, infuriating, likable, not likable, and endlessly fascinating. Caro's writing is wonderful, with an almost conversational quality. His research for this book -- which he details (parts of, at least) in the back of the book -- is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Caro left no stone unturned. I watched an interview of Caro not too long ago, and he mentioned that he was on the fence about doing the book's most famous chapter, "One Mile". Torn between the money-tight realities of life, and artistic desire, Caro decided to plunge ahead (with his wife's support) and embark on the six months' worth of research the chapter would need. The reader is thankful Caro make that choice.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York Overview

One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.

In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.

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