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

Rating:
Summary: Let them eat highways
Review: After reading this book you might well wonder how this arrogant public servant escaped prison. You might want to petition to have every park and roadway that is named after him renamed! On the other hand Robert Caro makes the case for how and why Robert Moses was able to do what he did extremely understandable, and even, inevitable to a point.

In the early years, as Caro rightly points out, Robert Moses' vision helped the city out of its doldrums of the Great Depression. He offered hope and a future when the present seemed so doubtful. At what point did Moses shift from a true visionary to a ruthless, megalomaniacal autocrat? To a neighborhood-squashing tyrant without conscience? There is no one event or series of events to explain this change, and Caro wisely avoids claiming there is. That is not his concern, anyway. What Caro does map out are the paths of destruction that Moses gouged through the metropolitan area. The interviews and extended quotations are very revealing, almost chilling. Moses's sang froid about New Yorkers--and how he cultivated it for half a century--defies reason. Yet this book, "The Power Broker" is as close to an understanding of Robert Moses as we'll ever get.

Rating:
Summary: A long book, but even 1200 pgs isn't enough for Moses
Review: At 1200 pages, the Power Broker is one of the longest books about a New York City figure ever written. Yet, despite its length, even the Power Broker can't go into everything Moses did.

Some things, like Moses stopping O'Malley from building a new stadium for the Dodgers, and Moses almost flattening Greenwhich Village and Soho aren't gone into at all, other things, like Moses building Lincoln Center and Shea Stadium, do not receive much attention, despite being major events. How on earth does Caro neglect to mention Jane Jacobs? There is also little contrast between what Moses was doing and what was done in other major cities. Did not Boston build an elevated highway through its downtown?

If Caro leaves things out, then how did the Power Broker make it to 1200 pages? Caro has these annoying five page descriptions of how beautiful the financial district's skyline is, and how great Jones Beach is. Caro is also repetitive about Moses' dislike of public transit.

Finally, Caro has a tendency to only focus on Moses' victories, and not his defeats. If you read Jameson Doig's Empire on the Hudson, about that other monster transportation entity, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, you will see that Moses had more defeats than Caro will admit. The Port Authority won its battle with Moses over the Manhattan Bus Terminal, won its battle with Moses over the Queens airports, won its battle with Moses over the Twin Towers, and several other smaller victories. Also, Caro says Moses was soooo powerful that it took a governor of the stature of Nelson Rockefeller, the ultra rich governor of New York and brother of the chairman of Chase-Manhattan could beat him. But by the time Nelson was beating Moses in the late 1960s, Moses was already very unpopular.

Anyway though, this is a great book about New York. You should read it. If you want to know more of Moses, try to watch Ric Burns' New York: A Documentary History. They have a lot of archival footage of Moses giving interviews. He literally said things like "cities are for traffic" and "if the end doesn't justify the means, what does?"

Rating:
Summary: There and back again (but not on the Long Island Expressway)
Review: I first picked up The Power Broker when it was published 25 years ago. Since then I've re-read it three or four times over the years. It is a true monument to Caro that this book has remained in print in both hc and pb over these years.

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.

Rating:
Summary: How unlimited power works
Review: Robert Moses, in this well written biography by Caro, was more powerful than the elected officials he served. Beholden only to his first and only mentor, Governor Al Smith, Moses, as told by Caro, became an unrelenting centralized power house in the administration of public works in both New York City and State government.

Caro brings Moses to life in this long, but enjoyable biography. Moses' intelligence, vision and bigatory are all brought out in Caro's the Power Broker. The master and ruler of the parks in New York, the great builder of bridges, roadways and beaches and the author of the fourth arm of government (the public authority), Moses weilded his power with great strength and little or no accountability. Moses, as told by Caro, changed the face of New York State Government and was literally unstoppable until (in his 70's) he was taken down by Nelson Rockefeller. In the Power Broker, for example, Caro conveys how Franklin D. Roosevelt as President was unable to limit Moses' influence in New York. Moses imprint on New York is still visible today when you drive on the Northern or Southern State Parkways in Long Island, travel across the various bridges in New York City or drive by the New York Power Authority in Western New York. In every corner of New York, Moses, through his ability to garner support (even reluctantly by some) of each of the Governors he served, was able to drive the public works agenda in New York for 50 years. One interesting irony is that Moses did not drive.

The Power Broker is a great work to read if you have any interest in politics generally or New York history in particular.

Rating:
Summary: A Book Worthy of the Subject
Review: Until I read The Power Broker, I really had no idea who Robert Moses was. I knew very little about urban planning, New York City politics, or public works. Caro handles the subjects so thoroughly that the lack of familiarity mattered not at all. Moses was obviously a giant of a man. He accomplished great things and made colossal blunders; he was a man of great vision who was blind to the effects his policies had on the less fortunate. The contradictions are laid out in full detail in this monster of a book. It is hard to comprehend the work that Caro must have put into this book; it stands as the definitive biography of Moses and the textbook of urban policy in America.