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

This massive work is at the same time a biography of Robert Moses and the metropolitan New York City area. Moses, originally a reformer and a true public servant, somehow became tainted by the power entrusted to him. It was his way or no way -- and once he became firmly entrenched there was no "no way." A typical Moses tactic: design a great public work (bridge, for example) and underestimate the budget. A bargain sure to be approved and funded by the politicians! Then run out of money halfway through construction. The rest of the money will surely be forthcoming because no politician wants to be associated with a half-finished and very visibile "failure" -- it's much better to take credit for an "against the odds" success.

I grew up in NYC at the tail end of Moses' influence and I remember the 1964 Worlds Fair in NYC vividly, especially a "guidebook" that lionized Moses' construction prowess. In school, Moses' contribution was also taught (always positively) when we had units covering NYC history. If nothing else, Moses understood the power of good publicity, and used tactics later adopted by the current mayor (King Rudy) to control the press and public opinion. This book brings Moses back to human scale and deconstructs (no pun intended) his impact on the city.

The book is long, detailed, and compelling. Great beach reading -- especially at Jones Beach! Now that it is celebrating its 25th anniversary, a new retrospective afterword from the author would be appreciated (perhaps a reprint of the article he wrote for the New Yorker a few years ago on how he wrote the book).

An interesting counterpoint to this biography of Moses is The Great Bridge by David McCollough. This story of a great public works project is also a biography of the Roeblings, the family of engineers who designed and built it. They shared Moses' singlemindedness, but the methods and results had far less negative results.


Don't blame us--blame the "Authority"   February 4, 2000
 51 out of 51 found this review helpful

Everyone knows--or intuitively feels--that American cities had some great opportunities to become enjoyable, livable places during the course of the 20th Century but somehow blew the opportunity. This book explains a major component of why and how the betrayal occurred by focusing on the man who was both the cause and the victim of the betrayal, a powerful bureaucrat little known outside of metropolitan New York, Robert Moses.

The book details Moses' slow rise to power as an idealistic Wilsonian Democrat fighting the entrenched power of corrupt Tammany Hall politics, his novel approach to parks planning (he virtually invented the "parkway," for example), his massive public works (among them the Triborough Bridge and all of New York City's expressways), and his inevitable decline and fall after he refused to relinquish power in old age.

As time wore on Moses became less and less the man of the people and more and more the man of the system of his own creation, and that system was the toll-gathering mechanism of New York's bridges and tunnels. He invented that peculiar institution, the "authority" (as in Port "Authority" or Tennessee Valley "Authority") that is neither wholly governmental nor wholly private, and so lacks the restraints of either; Moses' cash cows kept him in power and gave him an antidemocratic arrogance that is truly breathtaking and, one hopes, will never be duplicated.

This book isn't just for New Yorkers or for those who wonder why New York's roadways are so confusingly laid out. America's other big cities are New York writ small--they went to New York at the height of Moses' power and emulated his methods! That helps us understand the mania for building our now hopelessly overcrowded expressways and devaluing public transportation, whose lack we are just now trying to address by building expensive light-rail and commuter-train systems that should have been in place for decades.

This is an extremely long book and extremely "wonky" in terms of policy discussion but gripping reading nonetheless. It also set the tone for further political biogaphy/psycho-biography, by both Caro and other writers. The depth of research in this book is simply amazing.


Political power primer   October 18, 2000
 31 out of 32 found this review helpful

This massive work, published in 1975, is unfortunately just as timely today as it was a quarter century ago. It is the story of Robert Moses, arguably one of the most important and influential men of the second half of the 20th century. He, for better or for worse, gave us our models for the modern highway transportation system and wielded enormous power in the city and state of New York -- without ever being elected to a single public office.

At 1,162 pages, Caro's work will undoubtedly always face the charge that it needed editing. But to address large themes, a writer needs to expand, and Caro does, brilliantly for the most part. "The Power Broker" takes on the question of whether democracy in America really works. Using Moses' life as a model, the answer is "no." Moses began as a passionate believer in reform, a man who wanted to end favoritism and corruption in New York. Yet early on he concluded that to "get things done," he needed to beat the power-wielders at their own game, and he did. He built an enormous network of influence that included politicians, unions, banks and big business. And he used that power to build the most enormous transportation system in the nation, often over the objections of elected officials.

But the book also makes clear the cost of power. For one thing, there were political losers. Moses was ruthless in his attacks on those who opposed him, often lowering himself to attacking character. Mass transportation was a loser during the time Moses wielded power. He considered the automobile the premier mode of transportation, and he steadfastly refused to accommodate plans for subway, bus, and train improvements. And the poor and working class were losers in Moses' power game. He had no respect for the poor, particularly those with dark skin, and he ruthlessly destroyed their neighborhoods in his grand building schemes.

In the end, we have all lost because of Moses' vision. His idea that we can solve transportation problems by building more and more roads, bridges and infrastructure to accommodate commuters who live farther and farther from the places they work has carried the day, and those of us who live in medium-sized and big cities continue to suffer for it with every minute we lose in traffic.

Tremendous book -- grand in its vision, grand in its documentation, grand in its achievement.


Amazing, but flawed   March 24, 2003
 26 out of 34 found this review helpful

Caro's biography of Robert Moses is an engrossing tale of a man who accumulated an extraordinary amount of power and was unafraid to use every bit of it. It's incredibly detailed and researched and is invaluable to anyone trying to learn about 20th Century New York.

However, the book is flawed. Perhaps it's because Caro was writing 30 years ago, when Moses was still alive and people knew only the good he'd done, but he seems to have focused entirely on the negative side of Moses' legacy. Moses loved power, but he acquired it not only for its own sake, but to use it. He was no corrupt Tammany boss, lining his own pockets. Moses had a vision. For better or worse, his dream was nothing short of breathtaking. He wanted to reshape New York. And he did it. To me, that's the most interesting thing about Robert Moses, and Caro doesn't explain it. He explains Moses' lust for power and his sharp mind, but not why he chose to channel his energies in this direction. There are some family clues, but that's all. It still doesn't explain the desire of a man to remake a city and a state.

I also think Caro was too close to the events to be able to evaluate the consequences of Moses' decisions. As another reviewer said, it's quite likely that East Tremont would have changed at some point. The Jewish lower-middle class has mostly left the Bronx. There's also the question of how much Moses was influenced by national trends--the building of roads to the exclusion of public transit, the problematic idea of urban renewal, and the endless sprawl of the postwar suburbs.

As a lifelong resident of Long Island, I continue to be awed by Moses' legacy. Jones Beach, the parkways, bridges and tunnels--these form part of the fabric of my daily life. Moses' influence extended far beyond the projects themselves. Without the parkways and then the LIE extending to Long Island, it would still be estates and potato fields. My suburban homeland, filled with its 1950s houses on their 60' lots and tree lined streets, would never have been so much as a dream.

Caro has made me aware of the immense costs, financial and political, of Moses' projects. But I don't know if he truly appreciated them. He writes nice words about Jones Beach and other park projects, but I don't get the sense that he really felt anything. Driving down the Northern State, with its stone bridges, trees, and absence of billboards, I can and do appreciate what Moses did. Perhaps true greatness can only come at a great cost.

Despite focusing on the flaws in this review, I'm not trying to denigrate the book. It's truly a monumental achievement. However, I think it's important to be able to look at it with some perspective, which I don't think Caro was able to do.


A Tragic Tale of the (Mis)Use and Abuse of Power   August 2, 1999
 23 out of 25 found this review helpful

While this book at times seems insufferably long and the reader's interest will undoubtedly flag during some of its less exciting passages, "The Power Broker" is well-worth the time and effort required to complete it: its ending is possibly the most powerful of any book I have ever read. Chapter by chapter, in meticulous, well-documented detail, Caro builds a powerful indictment of an unelected public official who accumulated unrivaled power and used it to remold New York City and State - mostly for the worse - with massive highways, parks and public works projects. While some view Robert Moses simply as a "reformer gone bad," a man of incredible talent and intellect who allowed his lust for power to destroy his ability to do good, his story also reveals the vices common to almost all reformers, such as the tendency to look at the people they govern as an impersonal mass without considering the needs of individuals, or the harmful effects reform policies can have on "the people" as individuals. "The Power Broker" shows us not only how the concentration of too much power in the hands of one person subverts democracy, but that reform for its own sake is seldom a good thing.