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

I’ve wanted to read this for a long time – it’s one of those “goal reads” that I haven’t dared attempt for fear of failing. The book famously took seven years to write, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974.

This is the definitive biography of Robert Moses, who started off as a simple Parks Commissioner on Long Island, but accrued more and more power over 44 years to eventually become the man who totally controlled the development of New York City. He could do whatever he wanted, over the objections of whomever was the current mayor of NYC, or whomever was the current governor of New York State.

Moses was a builder. He longed to leave his mark on the landscape. He loved to build parks, and expanded this to the concept of “parkways.” As his power grew, he eventually managed to get control of building “expressways,” then bridges, then tunnels (thought he never liked them), then buildings, then entire public housing projects.

He accrued power by being a master of legislation. He wrote laws that meticulously established “authorities,” which are self-funding government entities that take in income through tolls, then issue bonds based on that income (at a huge multiplier, since the revenue only has to fund interest). Moses then took the proceeds from those bonds and built more stuff which generated more tolls.

The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority eventually became an empire which controlled hundreds of millions of dollars (tens of billions in today’s money) and was answerable solely to Moses, who installed himself as the managing board member and could not be dethroned.

Moses could be a cruel man. He was arrogant, latently racist, and enjoyed humiliating his opponents. He never cared much for personal fortunes – he strangely never had much in the way of a personal fortune – but loved to amass the power to impose his will on other people. Anyone who dared to challenge him was crushed – one phone call from Moses could instantly end someone’s career.

The author makes the point that Moses was like this because it had been done to him. He paints a picture of him as a very principled college graduate who sought to reform municipal government, but who threatened Tammany Hall a little too often. They destroyed him, left him penniless, and basically begging for work. He recovered at the age of 30 with a burning desire to never suffer that humiliation again, and employed those same tactics on everyone who opposed him for the next half-century.

Every one of Moses’s relationships was evaluated in the context of how much it would increase his power, as was every project. His desire for control became a powerful gravitational pull, growing year over year.

And Moses’s personal preferences became what NYC implemented. And Moses absolutely loved the automobile (despite not being able to drive). He disdained public transportation (in a larger sense, he disdained the public in general), so he built highway after highway, bridge after bridge, tunnel after tunnel, in a never-ending attempt to ease traffic problems. Of course, this failed – more capacity meant more cars and that meant more problems, so Moses simply kept building roads. No trains, no subways, just more and more roads for cars.

He managed his public image incredibly well. He was well-known in NYC, and cultivated an image of a tireless public servant, toiling away for very little money. The press loved him… until they didn’t.

In the 1960s, he began to falter. He over-stepped on some threats, picked some fights he couldn’t win, and his image took some hits. His enemies, seeing blood in the water, began to pile on and he was eventually brought to heel. He decided to run the 1964 World’s Fair, and it was a financial disaster.

But he ruled until very late in life. He was still wielding huge amounts of power in his late 70s. He was in his 80s when this book was published (he issued a 29-page rebuttal to it), and finally died in 1981 at the age of 92.

Was Moses a hero or a villain? The book says the latter, but despite his petty motivations, he wasn’t completely without merit. He did provide a lot of new public spaces for New Yorkers, even if it was unevenly distributed and capricious. The mark of a good biography is perhaps that it leaves with you with both good and bad impressions, as is the case here.

Robert Moses left an indelible mark on NYC that stands today, and this bled over to other cities. Many metropolises based their development off of what Moses was doing in New York, and today, many of them are still trying to dig themselves out from under the vehicle dependence that the strategy embodied.

This is a monster of a book – some 1,300 pages. But it’s never boring, not for one second. Robert Caro has done a stunning job of weaving an incredible tale of hubris. I loved it.

Book Data

Author

Robert A. Caro

Year

1974

Pages

1336

Acquired

Not recorded

Open Library

OL4195860W

Wikipedia

The_Power_Broker

• I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on August 7, 2026.
• A hardcover copy of this book is currently in my home library.