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 An important book to read November 17, 2008
Having grown up in upstate NY and having lived in Long Island recently I saw much evidence of Robert Moses' mark upon the NY metropolitan area. This book is a well-written and thoroughly researched biography on the life of this pivotal figure who shaped modern NYC and state, for the better, and in many cases, for the worse. Published in 1974 and winner of the prestigious Pulitzer prize, author Robert Caro researched and wrote this book at a time when Robert Moses' legacy was being called into question, NYC was in a fiscal crisis, and many were reconsidering the process by which we should remake our cities.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the urban design and an interest in the kind of tactics this powerful personality used to achieve his objectives.
How Old Man Moses Kept Rolling Along October 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When Shea Stadium is demolished later this year, it will mark another diminishment of the legacy of Robert Moses, the man who built the stadium along with so many of the parks, highways, and buildings that made New York City the city that never sleeps.
But the first and most devastating blow came 34 years ago, when Robert A. Caro wrote this book.
"As long as you're on the side of the parks, you're on the side of angels," Moses would often say. "You can't lose."
Others did lose, though, Long Island farmers whose lands Moses confiscated for state highways, middle-class neighborhoods in the way of his superhighways, and the city's poor who were at best nuisances to the elitist Moses during his decades in power. Combining his management of city affairs with his longer-standing role as state Parks Commission president, Moses was a Nietzschean nightmare of will-to-power pragmatism run amok. As Caro explains it, power was a path to glory, and glory a path to power, in a way that made Moses deaf to all other considerations, both idealistic and practical.
Eventually it made him corrupt, though not in the way it's more commonly understood. "Some men aren't satisfied unless they have caviar," said John A. Coleman, a broker of considerable power himself. "Moses would have been happy with a ham sandwich - and power."
Caro's book is an engaging landmark account of Moses' path, full of vibrant characters like Al Smith and Nelson Rockefeller with whom Moses dealt and clashed. It presents a sense of New York City as an almost living thing, an infrastructure challenge not only because of its developed landscape but because of its unique demands of demographics and geography - only one of its five boroughs, the Bronx, is on the American mainland. Moses' solutions, however, were often worse than the problems.
Caro spends a long time on Moses' foibles but never really explains how he amassed such a collection of structural triumphs. Shea Stadium, for example, is only touched upon as background to the failure of Moses' 1964-65 World's Fair. His state work, especially upstate, is almost entirely ignored. In damning Moses, Caro leans on some well-researched critical facts as well as some points about Moses' resistance to mass transit that doesn't allow for the fact Moses was not the only believer in the power of the automobile. The book reads like quicksilver at points, yet drags in others, especially when Caro is beating home the point of how little Moses cared about other people.
I'm glad I read "Power Broker", but I can't ever see myself trying to read it in toto again. It's exhaustive, single-minded, and giant in scope - much like the man it's about.
 Power Reveals September 5, 2008
Robert Caro's THE POWER BROKER is a lession in the use of power in the life and career of Robert Moses, and the consequent effects upon the people and substructure of New York City. Moses is such a disgusting figure, such a tyrant, that I literally found myself shaking at points. The press was in his pocket, elitest and racist, Moses painted himself as the selfless public servant. In reality, he cast people aside by the thousands in order to increase his power and accomplish what he wants. What a vile man. I'll never look at New York City the same again and I pray that I would never treat people the way he did.
Biography at its very best... July 7, 2008
Robert Caro's The Power Broker, a biography of Robert Moses, contains every attribute of a Shakespearean tragedy. Moses was brilliant, driven, an over-achiever, but possessed a deeply flawed character which aroused feelings of both esteem and disgust. Like all of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists, he was capable of both good and evil. Fully able to redeem himself, he instead moved unheedingly towards his doom. That 30+ years of unquestionable power within New York State's political, corporate, and labor elite forestalled this doom speaks to the measure of the man. Indeed, it took a Rockefeller to push him from the mountaintop.
One of the best biographies I've ever read, The Power Broker's 1,163 pages artfully and suspensefully tell the tale of a man for whom the words great and ignominious qualify as adjectives. Initially an ardent reformer, Moses was increasingly corrupted by power. At the apex of this power, Moses answered to no one and ran a wide reaching web of political commissions and public authorities as his personal empire.
His transition from reformer to elitist provides the backbone of Caro's epic. Once a voice for the common man, Moses eventually attained what can only be described as aristocratic contempt for the mob, the rabble, the lower echelon of economic achievement. The reader may marvel that such a powerful man was heretofore unknown to them, but the reader will certainly grow increasingly disenchanted at such a man's venality.
The Power Broker is a classic deserving the attention of every student of history. Despite it's heft, it remains a page turning pleasure throughout. As such, it most assuredly merits the highest ranking I can give it: 5+ stars. Trite though the term may be, Robert Caro has authored a masterpiece.
A brief review for a big, important, thorough and ground breaking book. June 13, 2008
This book, written by Robert Caro - probably the best living biographer, was his first book. It is a massive, thorough, detailed, engaging study of how one man - Robert Moses - planned, shaped and built - the modern city of New York.
It is about the acquisition of power and its utilization by one man in order to bring his vision of New York City to fruition.
Robert Moses - the primary subject of the book - together with the notion of power, and New York City itself as well as its residents being the other subjects - was trained in urban planning England, was a visionary, a planner, and a "Power Broker" - and thus the title, whose materials where New York City, planned, designed, built modern New York by stamping his vision in the form of new parks, spaces, roads and parkways, new neighborhoods, new subways/rail-lines, new beach and recreational facilities and areas, had an impact on the way millions of New Yorkers as well as visitors to NYC experienced NYC - experienced NYC - for decades. His shape of NYC is still shaping how humans experience reality in such city.
This is a tour de force. This is a good book for those interested in New York City, local and state government politics, the modern bureaucratic / administrative aparatus of government and those who wield the helm. Whether you agree with Robert Moses vision of NYC or not, he had a tremendous impact. The impact was not limited to NYC. Seen as the expert on urban planning, his model, his vision, his views, spread throughout the entire field of modern urban planning. Thus, his impact is not just local or state. It is in fact national and international. Modern cities - the leadership of which visited or modeled their cities on NYC - where shaped by his creations.
A long book. A detailed book. A hard book. But excellent, very interesting, and well worth the effort and time. Probably the prime example of what an excellent biography is and should be. It made Robert Caro, its author, into the preeminent biographer of the last several decades. It set the standard. I don't know if it has or will ever be matched.
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