The Power Broker
The Power Broker has used this cover art continuously since its original publication
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| Author | Robert Caro |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Robert Moses |
| Genre | biography |
| Publisher | Knopf |
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Publication date
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1974 |
| Media type | Hardback, Paperback |
| Pages | 1,336 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 1631862 |
| 974.7/04/0924 B | |
| LC Class | NA9085.M68 C37 1975 |
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses by Robert Caro. The book focuses on the creation and use of power in local and state politics, as witnessed through Moses' use of unelected positions to design and implement dozens of highways and bridges, sometimes at great cost to the communities he nominally served. It has been repeatedly named one of the best biographies of the 20th century, and has been highly influential on city planners and politicians throughout the United States.
The Power Broker traces Moses' life from his childhood in Gay Nineties Connecticut to his early years as an idealistic advocate for Progressive reform of the city's corrupt civil service system. According to Caro, Moses' failures there, and later experience working for future governor of New York Al Smith in the New York State Assembly and future New York Mayor Jimmy Walker in the State Senate, taught him how to acquire and wield power in order to achieve his goals.
By the 1930s, Moses had earned a reputation as a creator of beautiful parks in both the city and state, and later long-sought projects like the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, but at the price of his earlier integrity. Caro ultimately paints a portrait of Moses as an unelected bureaucrat who, through his reputation for getting large construction projects done, amassed so much power over the years that the many elected officials whom he was supposedly responsive to instead became dependent on him. He consistently favored automobile traffic over mass transit and human and community needs, and while making a big deal of the fact that he served in his many public jobs (save as New York City Parks Commissioner) without compensation, lived like a king and similarly enriched those individuals in public and private life who aided him.
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