The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York Hardcover – 2 July 2015

I have never written a review for anything in my life but I will make an exception for Caro's epic. I have just finished it. It is brilliant.I must confess that as of three years ago, I had never heard of Robert Moses. This is a difficult confession to make for a person who views themselves as knowing more than most about history. The confession is all the more difficult when Caro lists, as he does in the preface, Moses' list of achievements: builder of the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Veranzano Narrows Bridge, Jones Beach and their stunning Bathhouses, the United Nations building and the chicanery involved in bringing that prestigious organisation to New York, the Throgs Neck, Bronx-Whitestone bridges, the Long Island Expressways and the complete opening up, to the poor of New York City, of the land and beaches of Long Island. Then there were the playgrounds, more than 250 of them, which Moses constructed in New York City alone.Who was this man? He was a Jew at a time when being Jewish meant being excluded (he was excluded from his university's fraternity solely on this basis) and being on the periphery of social acceptance by the aristocracy. He was extremely intelligent and a possessor of his mother's (and grandmother before her) fierce self-righteousness and self-belief. He alone knew what was right and he would make sure that what he thought was right for the city, what he was sure was right for the city, would be done come hell or high-water, over the heads of objecting home-owners (whom he derided as 'crackpots') or uneasy politicians (whom he advised to take up a new profession if their conscience worried them).But Caro isnt really interested in where Moses came from or even the character of the man, although he does not shy away from discussing either. He is interested in the sole concept of power. Who has it? Where does it come from? How does one get it? How does one lose it? Whats possible without it? What can be achieved with it?Moses, a Jew in an Irish-dominated city had no power. He came from a wealthy family but to realise his dreams, the dreams of taking the virgin lands of Long Island from the Robber Barons who lived there and hand them back to the poor people of New York, the poor who had no playgrounds worthy of that name to take their children to, and transform those pristine lands into beaches and parkland, the likes of which neither America nor the western world had ever seen before, would require power.And not just any sort of power, legislative power. And this is how a man with a great knowledge of local government but with no electoral power to realise his dreams, came to power. Moses offered to support Al Smith, New York's first Irish-American Governor, a man who famously declared that he had never read a book in his life, and give him parklands. In return for huge parks and the consequent massive public approval, Smith was reelected Governor twice. As a payback Smith agreed to Moses' wish to become Parks Commissioner.With power at last Moses built on a vast scale. Caro details Moses enormous capacity for hardwork. Quite frankly, Moses was a force of nature. He worked 15-16 hour days, seven days a week, was chauffeured to and from work in a car specially adapted with a table and chairs to use as a mobile office. He created the Long Island Expressways. This is hard to visualise but up to this point (c. 1926) Long Island was vast wilderness owned by the wealthy. Moses created laws effectively allowing him to compulsorily purchase their land and convert it, over their delirious objections, for the betterment of society's poorest. Caro rightly gives Moses credit for this. But there was the other side of Moses.As he got older he craved more power. Being put in charge of Parks in New York City under Mayor La Guardia allowed Moses to bring his magic to the City. And he did so. Beloved of the media (especially the New York Times whose owner was a devout conservationist) Moses ensured that he had an ally in the press whom he call upon if any politician refused to do what he wanted.And that became the nature of the man. Moses' connections amongst the City's architects, builders, engineers, lawyers, bankers and Wall Street financiers, all men who realised that Moses was a man, the only man, who could cut through red tape and 'get things done' gradually meant that nobody, no local politician, not even the Mayor or Governor, at the risk of being rounded on by the media and adoring public who saw Moses as a model public servant, felt that they were strong enough to oppose him.Moses crushed all of these men. Caro details in a poignant chapter how Moses' own brother, Paul, could not find a job in the City, because he had a disagreement with his famous sibling. Caro interviewed Paul Moses on a few occasions and mentions in the book that he died, in the top apartment in a downtown building, in virtual poverty. Robert Moses could have helped his brother. He chose not to.Moses throughout the 1950's and 1960's revealed a man whose gloss began to wear off for the public. Caro expertly pulls together all the various strings to the drama in East Tremont,a vibrant neighbourhood in North Brooklyn, a neighbourhood which was demolished when Moses ran the Cross-Bronx Expressway right through it. Why didnt the local politicans object? Because if they did, they'd have every engineer and union-man in the construction industry roaring at them down the phone. They'd be denounced as 'standing in the way of progress', of 'denying men a chance to work'. One politician wearily told Caro that this experience, of being denounced, of being screamed at and publicly vilified by organisations who needed work, was impossible to imagine, all the more so when one knew that Moses was behind the scenes orchestrating it.Moses was eventually removed from all power in 1968. Caro points out that it needed a man every bit as much a bully as Moses to do it, every bit the force of nature he was, and every bit as powerful. Nelson Rockefeller was Governor and he had heard all the stories about Moses. He had gotten used to the stories that Moses, throughout his 50 years in power, had routinely offered to resign if he didnt get his way. Every Mayor and Governor had always backed down when this threat was made. Rockefeller was different. Caro shows that Rockefeller didnt have to back down, didnt need to, because he himself had access to the sort of money that Moses would use to lord over lesser public officials. Rockefeller had huge power. Rockefeller took Moses's threat to resign and allowed him to do it. Too late, Moses realised his mistake.Through chicanery of a different type, through lies-lies that Moses had often barefacedly told himself to others down through the years- Rockefeller eased Moses out of power and once out, kept him out. This last part of Caro's book (a book which another reviewer, despite its size, rightly alluded to as a 'page-turner') paints a sad picture of this once mighty man. Able at one point to defy President Roosevelt himself, by 1972, out of power, this man who had once held 12 city and state jobs at once, a man who in his twenties Frances Perkins had described admiringly as 'burning up with ideas, just burning up with them', was confined to his home in Long Island, lashing out at the inequities that had befallen a man of 82 years of age, of the lies that had been told him to ease him out of power, of being forced to live out his life in relative obscurity while lesser able men, incompetent politicians eager to score political points, denounced him and all that he had achieved as 'all that was once wrong with this city'. Caro expertly paints a picture of not only a frustrated old man at the end of his life in public life, but of a sad man, just a man really, all alone, with no one to visit him, alone with his thoughts and pictures of the things he built.Robert Moses was a force of nature. Caro's magnificent book shows, if nothing else, how, despite all the nay-sayers and doom-mongerers, anything, absolutely anything, is possible. Robert Moses was proof of this.

Long an admirer of Robert A Caro’s biographies of LBJ, I confess I had ignored The Power Broker because at first glance a book about a man who built bridges, roads, parks and civic buildings sounded bland compared to the complex personality of Lyndon Johnson. I was wrong and this book fully deserves its reputation as one of the best biographies ever written. Robert Moses was a peculiar man, initially fascinated by, of all things, the British Civil Service and how it remained incorruptible. He doesn’t appear to have been formally trained in anything but he quickly mastered the tedious aspects of statutes and how they are drafted, power structures and where true control and authority lie. He learned a great deal from Gov Al Smith, to whom he was devoted, but unlike Smith, Moses was not a benign man. Throughout his career his personal power was protected by foresight, and the killer clause. He was never elected to anything (and his one attempt to run for office almost destroyed him by exposing his raw and ruthless personality). He was Park Commissioner because that role gave him the kind of inviolate authority that politicians could only envy. It also meant that the public thought he fought on the side of the angels because everyone likes parks. In his early days he was an idealist, and armed with a letter of passage by the Governor, he tirelessly explored the virgin hinterland of New York, jealously guarded by the Robber Baron families who wanted to exclude the riff-raff from the wilderness and the seaside. He planned Parkways that would enable middle-class Americans to drive to the countryside previously barred to them by the privileged. He built vast and luxurious venues where previously there had been just sand, with building materials and leisure facilities second to none. He understood structural engineering and drove his loyal (and often terrified) staff to produce blueprints and plans and costings in record time. And although he was most active during the Depression years, money never seemed to be a problem. The myriad financial deals and bond issues can become dense at times but they were directly related to the freedom given him by the structure of an ‘Authority’, compared to a municipality, city or state administration. He had no personal interest in money, and coming from a wealthy family had refused a salary. He was ‘money honest’ but as his taste for power grew he became corruptible, fascinated by power for its own sake. The idealist of the early chapters soon turns into something of a monster with huge prejudices against lower class people, blacks and ethnics. When he built his Expressways and Parkways he deliberately made the bridges crossing them too low to permit buses because he just wasn’t interested in people who didn’t drive a car. Ironically, he never learned to drive a car himself and was chauffered everywhere in a luxurious limo that served as his mobile office. As his engineering megalomania grew he evicted thousands of tenants and bulldozed their houses and tenements to make way for another road. The cruelty with which this was done was later exposed and led to his downfall. He drove his engineers and structural crews very hard and the New York bridges he built are his monuments along with the UN Building and the Lincoln Centre. Only very late did it dawn on people that Moses’ roads didn’t reduce congestion at all; they did the opposite, feeding traffic into huge jams and making commuting a nightmare. Cars didn’t just fill roads, they needed to be parked in the City and at the airport. Moses despised trains and buses so mass transit was never part of his plans, as anyone lining up for a cab at JFK can testify. Yet this fascinating man continues to confound the reader. Physically driven, he worked long days then relaxed by diving into the sea and swimming for miles. The atmosphere in his offices was lively and chatty and invigorating and he instilled loyalty as well as affection (and terror). He always defended his subordinants fiercely and was contemptuous of complaints, petitions or legal challenges. He cultivated the press who loved him to the point of dereliction of duty as far as the common good was concerned. For a long time most of the press were in awe of him and he could do no wrong, and the little people he had pushed around had to wait a long time for justice. But he was a mean SOB too, unforgiving and vengeful. Chapter 26 is a fascinating description of his relationship with his older brother, who he destroyed, and his mother, and only a psychiatrist could unravel the darkness there. (Chapter 35 also gives fascinating insights into Moses). But Caro’s skill as a biographer makes us feel sorry for Moses when his downfall finally arrives, at the hands of some maverick reporters and Nelson Rockefeller. At the same time the realisation dawns that his life’s work as a builder of roads and bridges caused far more problems than it resolved, and ultimately his career was devalued. Power was so important to him that to be excluded from it was agony, and he became a ghost haunting a landscape he had built.

A formidable book in size and content. Excellent. But, a word of warning: buy the hardback if you can - it is only a few pounds more expensive than the paperback. The book has 1200 + pages and begins to fall apart almost immediately. They are only really held together with a very thin spine and glue. The publishers must have known this so did a great disservice to the book: an act of thoughtlessness that warrants comparison with Moses' own attitude.