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

By far one of the best books, and biographies, I've ever read. Caro leaves absolutely nothing unscrutinized in his examination of Robert Moses' life, eventually crafting a well-supported theory about the lust for power and how it manifests, not just in this politicians but, by inference, in many politicians. Early in his life, Moses establishes himself as a reformer, a champion against graft and favor in New York City and New York State politics. Though, soon he realizes that, without the requisite power, none of his reforms will ever see the light of day. So, he aligns himself with one of the Tammany Hall elite, Al Smith, and his career takes a very different turn, as does the face of New York. Moses' playbook is filled with show more manipulation and bullying, and it works for decades until an intolerant actor finally stands up to him over Shakespeare in the park and a group of Central Park mothers stands up to him over a tree. The beginning of the end for Moses is written in the front pages of the daily newspapers over those battles, the tables finally turned on the old media master. It's a long descent, and not a terribly deep one, so it isn't particularly satisfying.

Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, it's a journey, but one well worth the taking.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended
An all-time favorite. show less

Robert Caro's exhaustively researched 1974 Pulitzer prize-winning examination of the life and career of Robert Moses, who spent decades reshaping New York City by building parks, bridges, roads, and housing projects, and in the process acquired so much power that no one could stop him from doing basically whatever he wanted with the landscape of the city, even when they really should have.

Moses is a fascinating subject, and he comes across here as a man possessed of incredible drive and vision, with a real genius both for engineering works and political maneuvering, but also as a man utterly seduced by the love of power, blinded by his own arrogance, disturbingly ruthless, and deeply callous towards and contemptuous of the public he was show more meant to be serving -- a man who accomplished impressive things but also did massive amounts of damage to both individual people and the city as a whole.

Caro goes into all of it, good, bad, and complicated, in deep and specific detail. The resulting work is a hell of a tome: 1160 pages, not even counting the extensive end matter. It's not a quick read, either. It took me about three and a half weeks to finish it, and I don't think I've ever taken that long to finish a book, even one this length, in my entire life. Not when I was reading it straight through rather than picking it up intermittently, anyway. But even if it's far from zippy, it's surprisingly absorbing. Yes, there were parts where my attention waned, but far fewer than I'd have expected, given how very detailed it is, especially considering that I have no personal connection to, and only the vaguest familiarity with, NYC.

I think what really makes the book so engaging is that the story of Robert Moses ends up touching on so many big, broad, important topics far beyond the man himself, interesting as he was: the changing nature of cities over the course of the 20th century, the question of whether parks should exist primarily for the preservation of nature or for human recreation, the often devastating ways in which America has become utterly dominated by the car, the complex and disillusioning ways in which the business of government gets done, the outsized influence that individual personality quirks and petty feuds can have on the course of history, the pernicious ways in which racism and classism have shaped urban development, the corrupting influence of power, the extent to which public opinion is a product of the press, and the nature of human hubris.

Lots of food for thought here, in other words, and even though it ate up the better part of a month during which I otherwise might have read half a dozen other books, I am very glad I picked it up.

Also, immense props to Robert Caro, because I can barely imagine what a truly staggering amount of work must have gone into this. show less

FUCKING EXHAUSTING but I did it. IT is so difficult to spend so long with such an awful person, day in day out, lists of people he killed, lists of things he destroyed, lists of peoples lives ruined larger and longer than McCarthy, including his own brother and sister, countless interesting young people who could have done something interesting -- everything that I hate about New York is directly the result of this one person who ran New York based on his petty, racist, vile whims. I read the 23 page long rebuttal Robert Moses sent out on publication of this book -- and he doesn't deny anything! Calling Little Flower LaGuardia a racial slur? He meant it affectionately! His wife who became a sickly recluse who was unable to leave her show more home? So what if she is! Stole from his brother's trust and left him to die penniless and in a shoebox with no elevator because he didn't like that his brother wasn't a frothing racist? Won't even acknowledge he had a brother! I read this right after reading Aberration in the Heartland of the Real, a book about the same length, and also a biography -- about Timothy McVeigh. I would much rather spend the 67 hours I spent on this audiobook with Timothy McVeigh than spend another single second with Robert Moses, he is that terrible.

Great book, will never read it again, it's just too depressing. And there is no catharsis because this book would have been another 1,000 pages long if he had kept any of the part about Jane Jacobs, who finally dealt the killing blow to Robert Moses' ideology. But I kind of wish he would have included it, just so the readers could have some sense of triumph at the final vanquishing of this absolute terrible authoritarian racist sociopath. show less

A potted history of a city, and a multitude of mini biographies are all contained within a shockingly in-depth biography of a single man. A man who shaped one of the biggest cities in the world in large, literally concrete ways. This is an amazing work, and I cannot begin to understand how Caro managed to pull this all together into a cohesive, readable book.

It is long, at times tedious, often shocking, and always illuminating, but definitely most interesting if you have more than a passing familiarity with New York City. I have only visited once, and thus miss a lot of the subtleties of Moses’ machinations. Nevertheless, this was a rewarding book to read, and I wish it were possible for me to visit NYC again (not happening on *this* show more timeline), and pay attention to all the places mentioned.

Caro is an adept writer, at first coaxing admiration from the reader for the young Moses, which quickly cools to a disdain for the forceful and underhanded means in which mature Moses conducts much of his dealings. However, by the end, while the author seems sympathetic to the elderly man, this feeling did not transfer to me. I felt nothing but contempt for the old man mourning his loss of power.

While Caro is a fine writer, this book is from 1974, and some language he uses is absolutely past its sell-by date. Disconcertingly so. Nevertheless, it’s an utterly overwhelming book, and a staggering accomplishment by an author. show less

"Oh, he never earned a dollar in his life and now we’ll have to pay this [bill]." — Bella Moses

Very indulgent. Caro wielding the pen like a broom; sweeping emotional language in a narrative that alternates between Erstürmen and Stúrm und Dráng. Yet, when fewer than 100 pages remain, and with the character of Moses fixed within the "Mosaic" frame, how is it that our subject, age 74 (in 1962), can declaim, "Perceptive journalists sense that the public has tired of hearing Aristides called "The Just," and therefore yell for his ostracism [. . .] There is a notable tendency in the press to cut officials to one size in a sort of bed of Procrustes," (980). This is Moses sermonizing the biographer, albeit unintentionally.

Anne Carson, show more in Autobiography of Red, describes the function of the Homeric Epithet as a mnemonic constraint, which remained in place until Stesichorus, breaking from those wine-dark shores, called a child "bruiseless." That was over 2000 years ago. After nearly as much time spent reading Caro's text, we are similarly tiring of the epithet, "RM: Power Broker." Moses, in direct quotation, rarely comes off so simple. (We are similarly frustrated when, reading our own obituaries, the most significant episodes of our lives are efficiently summarized in a single sentence.) The biographer is constructing something not unlike the bed of Procrustes, whose subjects are stretched or amputated to fit a given length. Though he might, with due diligence, build a bed to fit the man just right, he has to be arrogant enough to forget its primary function as a torture device show less

A thorough and damning chronology of the Manhattan Machiavelli that from the mid-'20s to the late '60s cast an authoritarian shadow over Long Island and Manhattan. The megalomania-truly a quest for power in spite of sense or reason-could be the effective plot for a modern opera. Loathing common people - even harboring racist and anti-Semitic notions - he steamrolled and bulldozed for more parkways, parks, and bridge although he himself didn't even drive. He cruelly impoverished his own brother and grew physically deaf even as he was metaphorically deaf to the please of he cruelly displaced over the tenure of several NYC mayors.

Also interesting is the story of Flushing Meadows Park, the fourth largest public park in New York City, show more created out of the sites of the 1939/1940 and 1964/1965 New York World's Fairs. Earlier, The Meadows were a dump famously characterized as "a valley of ashes" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. show less

An epic and important--but undeniably hard to read--classic in urban planning. Moses is one of the most infamous people in 20th century planning and the history of New York, and much of that credit is due to Caro's classic. In a sprawling, 1,161-page (!) narrative, the author takes us through Moses' life from an upper-crust childhood and through the frustrating times of trying to establish a career, before we get into the jobs that actually cemented his legacy over a decades-long grasp of power building parks, beaches, highways (so many highways!), tunnels, and his beloved bridges. Once he got to that point, Moses was openly corrupt, physically and verbally violent toward subordinates, and an avowed racist.

If that wasn't enough, his show more life and pet projects were heavily subsidized throughout early adulthood by his wealthy mother, never seeming to appreciate this advantage or even understand how everyday New Yorkers, the users of his public works, lived without them. As a result, playgrounds weren't located in poor and working-class neighborhoods, highways were chronically congested from their opening day, mass transit was left without investment for decades, and worst of all, literally thousands of New Yorkers had their homes taken and bulldozed, all because Moses didn't consider the individual to matter in the face of building great works. Those factors all contribute to the full story of who Robert Moses was, and it's important they are in the story, but it does make this hard to read in some points. Nevertheless I am glad this hefty biography exists, for the benefit of the history of planning and what not to do as a practitioner. show less