I read all 1,200 pages of ‘The Power Broker’ and now I have beef with a dead man

by Rachel

Photo of The Power Broker sitting on a wooden side table in a living room

You know how they say you’re never more than six feet from a spider? In New York City, I feel like you’re never more than six feet from Robert Moses.


I mean this both literally and figuratively. Here, for example, is Curbed deep dive about a project in my neighborhood that I read yesterday, where the infamous city planner comes up repeatedly. He’s also name-checked in a recent Atlantic article about abundance politics. I’ve also literally read the document Moses wrote making the case to build the apartment building I now live in. And looking at important, timely topics like congestion pricing, Open Streets, the MTA, and the current mayoral election, let me just tell you…the ghost of Robert Moses is everywhere. (If this guy had been obsessed with trains and tunnels instead of bridges and cars, we’d be living in a very different America right now!)


In both New York and across the U.S., we’re still dealing with* the negative effects of his 40-year (unelected!!!) reign, which is why The Power Broker—Robert Caro’s 1200-page Pulitzer Prize–winning accounting of Robert Moses’s life and work—was such a fascinating and infuriating read. 


I had often heard people talk about The Power Broker because of how long it is, but…no one ever really talks about how good it is! And not just good in the sense of, like, “I’m learning so much from this, it is Important,” though that is also true. But it’s really, really readable. It’s juicy! The stakes are so high and there’s endless drama, gossip, humor, and pettiness, coupled with the kind of epic narrative arcs that feel more like fiction—it really doesn’t feel like reading a history book. (My jaw actually dropped at times.) Robert Caro does an incredible job of making the case for why we all need to know this bastard’s name, and laying out just how destructive, nasty, cruel, and prolific Moses was. One of the worst people to ever do it! I initially decided to just read the intro to see if I wanted to fully commit to the book, and by the time I finished that, I was…panting. I truly couldn’t put it down. (And before you ask: Yes, Moses has replaced Samuel Pepys as my #1 historical enemy.)


Because 2024 was the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, there’s been a ton of renewed interest and media coverage in it. 99% Invisible (a podcast I love!) did a multipart series on The Power Broker last year, which is definitely a worth a listen if you know in your heart that you’re never going to read the whole book. It’s very light/fun (one of the co-hosts for this miniseries used to write for The Daily Show), and does a great job of communicating the key takeaways. (At minimum, you should definitely listen to the interview they did with AOC, wherein she talks about why the federal government…is the way it is. Her interview starts at 1:51:16 and is so good and will also make you want to scream.)


One of my biggest takeaways from The Power Broker is just how much impact a single person can have. Even in a city as big and as complicated as New York, it’s increasingly evident to me that a few loud NIMBYs with a bone to pick can stall progress for years. And yeah, Robert Moses didn’t do what he did alone…but the book was just a stark reminder that, for better or for worse, people built the world we live in, and people can change it. 

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*Here’s a very salient example: The Second Avenue Subway comes up a few times in 'The Power Broker;' it was first proposed in 1920 and is mentioned toward the end of the book as something that the city still “desperately” needs (so, in the 1970s). I was curious what ever happened with it so I decided to look it up…and discovered that only the first three stations and two miles of track on the line have been completed to date, and this only happened in…2017.
Books, NYC, politics