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

“Half of all good writing is deleting.”

I did not find anything so revealing in this investigative work to warrant the absolute mountain of praise it has received. If you believe the US government/society is spotless, non-corrupt, just, and equal, then this book may change your mind. But for anyone who has long since abandoned that naïveté, there is nothing earth-shattering about this life-sucking stack of rambling administrative blah. Save your time poring through municipal bond covenants, legislative appendices, and the rest of it.

I am afraid this is the “Infinite Jest” of nonfiction - a book acclaimed and pursued for no apparent reason other than to seem intelligent. Onward !

I listened to most of this book on my long and torturous highway commute which is exactly what Robert Moses would have wanted <3

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.

Robert Moses's story is an epic to realise a vision of urban splendour realised through sheer will, influence, and an understanding of power that would make Machiavelli pause for thought. Moses's journey is both awe-inspiring and a cautionary tale. Caro, with precision, rigorous research and the insight of a psychologist, dissects the ways in which Moses's quest reshaped the very fabric of New York, often at a steep cost to its soul and its inhabitants.

What renders The Power Broker so resonant for me, beyond its exploration of power dynamics and urban planning, is the nuanced portrayal of Moses himself. Caro presents him not simply as a villain or hero but as a character, whose flaws and ambitions are inseparable from his achievements. It serves as a reminder of the complexity of those who shape our world, the mixed legacies they leave behind and the countless, often voiceless, lives altered in their wake.

Engaging with Caro's narrative felt akin to observing the landscapes and scenes I've traversed in works like Under the Volcano or The Recognitions. Here, the city's infrastructure plays the dual role of stage and actor, reflecting the grandiose dreams and stark realities of its architect. It's a story that compels us to look beneath the surface, to perceive the human desires, the conflicts, and the compromises woven into the urban fabric.

It's an epic book that doesn't merely recount history; it invites us to question the forces that shape our environments and our lives within them. Caro's work, much like the layered narratives of William Gaddis or the intricate worlds of Joseph McElroy, offers a mirror to the complexities of progress and power, urging us to ponder the paths we pave for future generations.

The Power Broker is not just a biography of a man or an analysis of urban planning; it's an epic, a cautionary tale, and a reminder of the indelible mark one individual can leave on the canvas of history.

Wow, what a book. I feel like I’ve lived a whole lifetime within these pages.

Power, public works, the lucky brakes over the arc of a persons career, Miscalculations, coverups, partnerships, friends and allies turned enemies. An empire built on toll bridges. All of it. I don’t think I can quite summize this book. It’s sprawling, about Moses yes, but also New York, the city and the state. Mayors, Senators, engineers, celebrities and notable presidents. Slums, poverty, parks and construction.

There’s a few books that I’ve read, I can tell I’ll never quite be the same after reading them, I think this is one of those. I feel like it just changes the way you think about the world, life, how things happen.

Wow I finally made it. And I loved it. The Power Broker is just as much a biography of New York City as it is of Robert Moses. I thought One Mile (Phoebe’s favorite chapter) explained how RM did not care about New Yorkers at the time, and Highwayman (my favorite chapter) explained how RM did not care about New Yorkers today. This book also perfectly explained why we now have congestion pricing in 2025, despite being written 50 years ago.

Seriously so worth the read. S/o Phoebe for the rec!

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 first time at age eighteen, but election returns in the years since (in particular the 2004 presidential race) dulled the sophisticated glamour of the ballot box, forcing me to admit that an ability to vote does not indicate the presence of intellectual maturity... The first time I got a job with benefits and sat through a presentation explaining the HMO plan, life insurance, and “401K,” I did feel old in a certain kind of way, but there was a sense of the absurd to it, as if I were in drag as an adult, staggering around in my mother’s too-big high heels and smudgy lipstick in a silly effort to look like a grown woman.

For the past few years I’ve had the sense of wearing an oversized grownup life that wasn’t actually mine, while that magical rite of passage into adulthood continued to elude me. Maybe when I have children things will click into place, I’ve mused, listening to Talking Heads with one ear and sort of doubting it.... Part of this might be generational; if thirty is the new twenty, it’s no wonder that I get that Lost Boys feeling, and shrug confusedly when overnight company makes fun of my teddy bear.

I’m pleased to announce that thanks to the glory of Robert Caro, this stage is basically behind me. Having finally finished The Power Broker, I feel much more like a grownup, and believe it or not, I’m pretty into that.

When I was a little kid, I felt that the adults around me had a thick, rich, complicated understanding of the way the world worked. They knew things – facts, history – and they understood processes and people and the way something like a bond measure or a public authority worked. It was this understanding – which they had, and I didn’t – that made me a child, and them adults. Grownups had an infrastructure of information, truth, and insight that I lacked. As I grew older, I was dismayed to discover that grownups really didn’t know a fraction of what I gave them credit for, and that most of the people ostensibly running the world had no clue how it operated, and my intense disillusionment caused me to lose sight of that adulthood theory for awhile.

But reading this book made me feel like a grownup because it helped me to understand the way the world works as I never had before. This book is about power. It is about politics. It is a history of New York City and New York State. It is an explanation of how public works projects are built. It is about money: public money, private money, and the vast and nasty grey areas where they overlap. This book is about democracy, and the lack thereof. It is about social policy, and economics, and our government, and the press. This book is about urban planning, housing, transportation, and about how a few individuals’ decisions can affect the lives of the masses. It helped explain traffic in the park, and the projects in Brownsville, and a billion other mysteries of New York City life that I'd wondered about. The Power Broker is about ideals, talent, and institutional racism. It is about inequality. It is about genius. It is about hubris. It is the best goddamn book I have ever read in my entire life, hands down, seriously.

Please do not think that it took me five months to read this book because it was dense or slow! This was a savoring, rather than a trudging, situation. Robert Caro is an incredibly engaging writer. One thing that happened to me early on from reading this was that I lost my taste for trashy celebrity gossip. Who CARES about Britney’s breakdown or, for that matter, Spitzer’s prostitute peccadilloes when I could be reading about the shocking intricacies of Robert Moses’ 1925 legislative consolidation and reorganization of New York State’s administrative structure? This book gave me chills – CHILLS! – on nearly every page with descriptions of arcane political maneuvering and fiscal policy so riveting that I lost my previous interest in reading about sex and drugs. Let’s face it: sex and drugs are pretty boring. Political graft, mechanics of influence, the workings of government: now that’s the hot stuff, when it’s presented in an accessible and digestible form. Nothing in the world is more fascinating than power, and Robert Caro writes about power better than anyone I’ve come across. There are no dry chapters in this book; there’s barely a dull page. It is infinitely more readable than Us magazine, and not much more difficult.

Of course The Power Broker is many things, among them a biography. While any one portrait of New York power icons from Al Smith to Nelson Rockefeller is more than worth the price of admission, this book is primarily about Robert Moses. Caro understands and explains the relationship between individual personalities and systems. One of his main theses is that Moses achieved the unchecked and unparalleled levels of power he did because he figured out how to reshape or create systems around himself. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority would not have existed without Robert Moses, and Robert Moses would not have been what he was, or accomplished what he did, without the brilliance he had for shaping the very structure of government into conduits for his own purposes. To explain this, Caro needs to convey a profound understanding not only of how these systems worked, but of who this man was. He does so, and the result goes beyond Shakespearean: it is Epic. The Power Broker is the story George Lucas was trying to tell about Anakin Skywalker’s transformation to Darth Vader, only George Lucas is no Robert Caro, and The Power Broker succeeds wildly in the places where Star Wars was just a hack job (of course, Caro wasn’t handicapped by Hadyn Christensen, which does indirectly raise the burning question: WHO’S OPTIONED THIS???).

Robert Moses was an incredible genius. He was also an incredible asshole. Robert Moses was probably one of the biggest assholes who ever lived, or at least, who ever got free reign to redesign a major modern American city to his fancy. One of the innumerable triumphs of this book is that while it certainly does demonize Moses to a great extent, it doesn't seem to do so unjustifiably, and it never strips him of his humanity. Caro conveys a deep respect and empathy for his brilliant subject, even as he also expresses horror, disgust, and rage as he describes Moses’ forty-four-year unelected reign of power.

I know it’s a mistake to do this review right after finishing, and I’m a bit grossed out that I could write something so gushingly uncritical; that’s unlike me, and it’s possible that later I’ll think of some complaints…. I might not, though. I really do think that this is the best book I’ve ever read, and I wish there were some way that I could adopt Robert and Ina Caro as my grandparents, and that I could go over to their house for Sunday dinner and then take walks together in Central Park. Right at this moment I believe that Robert Caro is the smartest person in the world, and I’m not in the least bit resentful that I’m going to have to devote the rest of my life to reading his LBJ doorstoppers; in fact, I welcome it (though I’m not in a huge hurry to start).

Oh, I’m sure this book has flaws like any other. My main problem with it was that it was too short. Caro did not go into nearly enough detail about a large number of issues that I’d expected to learn about. For instance, there was little more than offhand mentions of Moses’ upstate projects; I was surprised that there was virtually nothing in here about Niagara Falls. There was also almost nothing on Shea Stadium, and while they did keep coming up, I never felt adequately informed about Moses’ plans for the three crosstown expressways, and the successful opposition to them. How real a prospect were these, and what did the public fight look like? I wasn’t so clear on that. While it’s possible that Caro had nothing interesting to say about these projects, it’s more likely that he had to draw the line somewhere, and 1162 pages was that place. I mean, otherwise he probably could’ve gone on forever…. There’s a lot to say.

I definitely recommend that anyone who reads this book do as I did, and divide it with an exacto knife into four duct-tape bound commuter volumes. It’s fun to draw your own Power Broker covers on your personalized editions, and a good excuse to pull out those crayons which, as a bona fide adult, you so rarely use!

It occurs to me that I’ve babbled on forever but still haven’t explained at all what this book is about. If you think you might want to read it but you’re not sure, check out this article by Robert Caro:
http://www.robertmosesnyc.com/citysha...
It has those stupid New Yorker dots, which the book thankfully does not, but otherwise is kind of like a miniaturized version of The Power Broker and gives a much better sense than I just did of what it’s all about.

Had a goal of finally finishing the Power Broker this year and snuck in under the wire! Definitely the longest book I’ve ever read, but unlike most longer books these days I didn’t actually feel like it needed more editing. There were certainly parts I found more interesting (parks and specific public works in the city) than others (lots of names and details about financial transactions and politics) - but overall it was a truly masterful work and I learned so much. I love learning about NYC and urban planning and found it really interesting to think about the book in the context of the time it was written (50 years ago!).