The Power Broker (Pulitzer Prize Winner): Robert Moses and the Fall of New York-Fast Shipping

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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York.

One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, RobertCaro’s monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moseswas the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of NewYork. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degreethe way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America’sCity Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital informationabout such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and thegenesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and NelsonRockefeller.

But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensionalportrait of a man—an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal frameworkof the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficientto shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of OurCrowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he foughtfor the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous floweringof parks and parkways, playlands and beaches—and then ultimately brought down onthe city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (neversufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures ofpublic housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, theaccumulation of power became an end in itself.

Moses built an empire and lived likean emperor. He was held in fear—his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyonewho opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decadeafter decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developinghis public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as “Triborough”—agovernment whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans weredecided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses—an immense economicforce directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city’s political andeconomic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millionsof dollars’ worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on thebasis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominatedthe politics and politicians of his time—without ever having been elected to anyoffice. He was, in essence, above our democratic system.

Robert Moses held powerin the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman,Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoraltiesof La Guardia, O’Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceivedand carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars—he was undoubtedly America’sgreatest builder.

This is how he built and dominated New York—before, finally,he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller).But his work, and his will, had been done.