Caro brings Moses to life in this long, but enjoyable biography. Moses' intelligence, vision and bigatory are all brought out in Caro's the Power Broker. The master and ruler of the parks in New York, the great builder of bridges, roadways and beaches and the author of the fourth arm of government (the public authority), Moses weilded his power with great strength and little or no accountability. Moses, as told by Caro, changed the face of New York State Government and was literally unstoppable until (in his 70's) he was taken down by Nelson Rockefeller. In the Power Broker, for example, Caro conveys how Franklin D. Roosevelt as President was unable to limit Moses' influence in New York. Moses imprint on New York is still visible today when you drive on the Northern or Southern State Parkways in Long Island, travel across the various bridges in New York City or drive by the New York Power Authority in Western New York. In every corner of New York, Moses, through his ability to garner support (even reluctantly by some) of each of the Governors he served, was able to drive the public works agenda in New York for 50 years. One interesting irony is that Moses did not drive.
The Power Broker is a great work to read if you have any interest in politics generally or New York history in particular.
Some things, like Moses stopping O'Malley from building a new stadium for the Dodgers, and Moses almost flattening Greenwhich Village and Soho aren't gone into at all, other things, like Moses building Lincoln Center and Shea Stadium, do not receive much attention, despite being major events. How on earth does Caro neglect to mention Jane Jacobs? There is also little contrast between what Moses was doing and what was done in other major cities. Did not Boston build an elevated highway through its downtown?
If Caro leaves things out, then how did the Power Broker make it to 1200 pages? Caro has these annoying five page descriptions of how beautiful the financial district's skyline is, and how great Jones Beach is. Caro is also repetitive about Moses' dislike of public transit.
Finally, Caro has a tendency to only focus on Moses' victories, and not his defeats. If you read Jameson Doig's Empire on the Hudson, about that other monster transportation entity, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, you will see that Moses had more defeats than Caro will admit. The Port Authority won its battle with Moses over the Manhattan Bus Terminal, won its battle with Moses over the Queens airports, won its battle with Moses over the Twin Towers, and several other smaller victories. Also, Caro says Moses was soooo powerful that it took a governor of the stature of Nelson Rockefeller, the ultra rich governor of New York and brother of the chairman of Chase-Manhattan could beat him. But by the time Nelson was beating Moses in the late 1960s, Moses was already very unpopular.
Anyway though, this is a great book about New York. You should read it. If you want to know more of Moses, try to watch Ric Burns' New York: A Documentary History. They have a lot of archival footage of Moses giving interviews. He literally said things like "cities are for traffic" and "if the end doesn't justify the means, what does?"
An amazing book about power and about Americana.
However, the book is flawed. Perhaps it's because Caro was writing 30 years ago, when Moses was still alive and people knew only the good he'd done, but he seems to have focused entirely on the negative side of Moses' legacy. Moses loved power, but he acquired it not only for its own sake, but to use it. He was no corrupt Tammany boss, lining his own pockets. Moses had a vision. For better or worse, his dream was nothing short of breathtaking. He wanted to reshape New York. And he did it. To me, that's the most interesting thing about Robert Moses, and Caro doesn't explain it. He explains Moses' lust for power and his sharp mind, but not why he chose to channel his energies in this direction. There are some family clues, but that's all. It still doesn't explain the desire of a man to remake a city and a state.
I also think Caro was too close to the events to be able to evaluate the consequences of Moses' decisions. As another reviewer said, it's quite likely that East Tremont would have changed at some point. The Jewish lower-middle class has mostly left the Bronx. There's also the question of how much Moses was influenced by national trends--the building of roads to the exclusion of public transit, the problematic idea of urban renewal, and the endless sprawl of the postwar suburbs.
As a lifelong resident of Long Island, I continue to be awed by Moses' legacy. Jones Beach, the parkways, bridges and tunnels--these form part of the fabric of my daily life. Moses' influence extended far beyond the projects themselves. Without the parkways and then the LIE extending to Long Island, it would still be estates and potato fields. My suburban homeland, filled with its 1950s houses on their 60' lots and tree lined streets, would never have been so much as a dream.
Caro has made me aware of the immense costs, financial and political, of Moses' projects. But I don't know if he truly appreciated them. He writes nice words about Jones Beach and other park projects, but I don't get the sense that he really felt anything. Driving down the Northern State, with its stone bridges, trees, and absence of billboards, I can and do appreciate what Moses did. Perhaps true greatness can only come at a great cost.
Despite focusing on the flaws in this review, I'm not trying to denigrate the book. It's truly a monumental achievement. However, I think it's important to be able to look at it with some perspective, which I don't think Caro was able to do.