Knowingo
The cover of The Power Broker

The Power Broker

Robert A. Caro, 1974

Discover how Robert Moses transformed New York through forty four years of unelected power, shaping modern highways and parks while revealing how public authorities can bypass democratic accountability.

Get the app Read on the web

18 parts, about 37 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Shows how one unelected official reshaped New York for decades, and who paid for his parks, bridges and expressways
  • Reveals the quiet tools of power: bill drafting, bond covenants, toll money and legal patronage that no voter could reach
  • Weighs real public achievement against deliberate exclusion, displaced neighborhoods and a starved transit system

Who it is for

  • Urban planners and city officials weighing big infrastructure
  • Residents curious why their city's roads and parks look this way
  • Readers studying how power works outside elections

What the summary covers

  1. The Paradox of Power3 min
  2. The Idealist in the Wilderness2 min
  3. The Education of Bob Moses2 min
  4. The Long Island Dream and Statutory Deception2 min
  5. The Battle of the Taylor Estate2 min
  6. Jones Beach and the Architecture of Exclusion2 min
  7. Accommodating the Barons and Crushing the Weak2 min
  8. Capturing City Hall and the 1934 Miracle Year2 min
  9. The Defeat of Order Number 1292 min
  10. Fratricide: The Ruin of Paul Moses2 min
  11. The Bond Covenant Fortress2 min
  12. The Battle of the Harbor and Castle Clinton2 min
  13. The Clean Machine and City Construction Coordinator2 min
  14. The Meat Ax in East Tremont2 min
  15. The Transportation Tragedy and Induced Demand2 min
  16. Title I and the Weaponization of Slum Clearance2 min
  17. The Battle of Central Park and the exposition Debacle2 min
  18. The Fall of the Master Builder2 min

Recommended by

  • David HalberstamPulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of The Best and the Brightest
    Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.
  • Barack ObamaFormer president of the United States

About the author

  • Robert A. CaroAmerican journalist and biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson
    • Born 30 October 1935
    • Born in New York City and grew up on Central Park West
    • Studied English at Princeton and graduated cum laude in 1957
    • Spent six years as an investigative reporter at Newsday on Long Island
    • Spent 1965 to 1966 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where a class on urban planning brought Robert Moses back to him
    • Expected the Moses biography to take nine months; it took until 1974
    • The book rests on 522 interviews, seven of them with Moses himself
    • Worked on the book in 1967 to 1968 as a Carnegie Fellow at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

Read it alongside

  • Goes deeperBreakneck

    Robert Caro shows how protest and a governor's maneuver ended Robert Moses's unilateral building in New York; Dan Wang argues the backlash against master builders hardened into procedure that now delays American public works.

More books like this