Robert Caro's The Power Broker: C/D?

Probably D, though, for giving Caro the idea of "Gee, one huge book just isn't enough" for his LBJ biography…

In a sense, though, I feel like Caro kind of revels in what Moses could get away with ("look at this guy!"). But the picture he paints is, in th end, unflattering.

Definite classic in my mind, even just for being one of the most engrossing things I've ever read. But I also think it is (was?) a really important book, not only because it revealed quite a bit that was previously unknown about Moses, but also because Caro deftly articulates the big picture and really illustrates the heartbreaking waste of power and potential of Moses's later years.

I almost handed a programming assignment in late because I was too engrossed in the book. And I remember crying out "you son of a bitch!" when Caro revealed Moses' bridges-too-low for buses masterstroke.

Caro on old vs new media, the new NYC, etc

(Moses')s racism—he was the most racist human being I had ever really encountered. I still remember him, he had this gesture. When I interviewed him he was already 78 or 79, but he had immense physical power, and this gesture, which I can’t even really do. [Caro loudly slams his open palm down on his desk.]

He took some call, and he hung up the call, and he just—[Caro slams his palm down again.] The quote is somewhere in there, but he says, “They expect me to build playgrounds for that scum floating up from Puerto Rico.” I couldn’t believe it. He had no apology at all.

http://gothamist.com/2016/02/17/robert_caro_author_interview.php

I should really read those LBJ books

I was just talking to my wife and I said I’d give anything to take a year off and go back to being a general assignment reporter.

Why don’t you?

Yeah but I’m worried I’m not gonna finish the books now.

my george rr martin, srsly

The audiobook is 66 hours long.

i got this for Christmas :D

not entirely sure what i’m getting into but a) i’ve read the introduction and
b) this book is fucking heavy af

(99% invisible podcast is doing a kindof monthly bookclub/readalong thing starting mid jan which is what finally got me started on the idea of reading it after seeing ppl talk about it for a few years since the pandemic i guess)

You won’t regret this

It's so freaking good. Caro has a way of getting his hooks in you - I bet you love it.

My favorite chapter is called, "The Meat Axe".

why is there no (legit) ebook of this

Undoubtedly it's down to the money...

"The Power Broker Is Still Not Available As an E-Book. Except … It Is."
https://www.curbed.com/2021/07/power-broker-caro-ebook-knopf-amazon.html

lol 'power broker' is blocked on slsk

the coated paper its printed on reminds me of old textbooks

but i admit the introduction was super-impressive as far as what a good job he does of setting the table for this mfer

After this you understand the structure of NYC in a totally new way

I think I’m gonna reread this along with the podcast

:D

The 10MB epub on Anna's Archive is the one to get. The 3.5MB one is messed up.

It's been so long since I've read it - probably early on in college back in the 1900s. I need to reread it as an adult - going to follow along with the podcast too.

wow this has really hooked me already - i finshed part 1 and am onto part 2 already

i figured i’d make it to end of ch2 by the time the podcast starts up on the 19th but i am now way past and merrily reading on ahead

quite an impressive feat how Caro synthsiszes what must be an incredible amount of research. he makes what seems like a potentially dry subject area so fascinating. he never drowns you in ~too much~ process or systems or context, just gives you ~enough~, the right level of detail needed to reinforce the character of Moses and where/how he falls within it

Glad you're loving it. It also builds very nicely.

fyi the first ep of the 99% Invisible podcast’s Power Broker “bookclub/read along” is up now ( it’s on the normal 99% Invisble feed)
* AND it includes an excellent & lengthy interview w the great man himself mr robert caro :D

he better conserve his energy!

Hope the first question was, "Regarding The Power Broker, when are you going to finish the last volume of the LBJ series?"

lol

he has an excellent NY accent

That accent will probably go with him

I really wanted to pick this up when I was in NYC last year, but I didn't realize how damn heavy it was and it was either this goes or about four other books went from my Strand/McNally Jackson hauls in order to fit in my carry on.

Finally grabbed a copy at my local shop last week.

finally joining in on the re-read with 99pi and forgot just how great that introductory chapter is.

Heads up: https://www.archpaper.com/2024/06/exhibition-robert-caro-the-power-broker-new-york-historical-society/

In his new memoir, Working, Robert Caro said that his late editor Bob Gottlieb slashed 750,000 words from the original manuscript of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. For the Caro fans walking among us, we yearn to know: What got cut?

For the first time ever, Caro acolytes will soon be able to read pages from The Power Broker’s original manuscript that never saw the light of day. This fall, an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society will open to the public that tells the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography’s full story.

The show opens on September 6, fifty years after Knopf published the 1,336-page tome about Robert Moses in 1974. Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50 will feature handwritten notes by Caro, and redlined manuscripts by Gottlieb, among other ephemera from Caro’s archive that the New-York Historical Society acquired in 2019.

All in all, the exhibition will give a glimpse into how the sausage was made behind arguably the 20th-century’s most important book about New York. Archival documents will portray how Caro turned 522 interviews conducted over seven years into a cogent story. Papers that portray Caro’s legendary work ethic will abound, as well as research notes he took while trying to understand how Jones Beach got built, among other Moses contraptions.

.....

After the show debuts, on October 7, a conversation between Robert Caro and Roman Mars and Elliot Kalan from 99 % Invisible will take place on stage at New-York Historical’s Robert H. Smith Auditorium.

ooooh

ordered this book less than twelve hours ago after it came up as a question on university challenge

i'm finally tackling this too! i took a box-cutter to my copy and divided into three volumes, with cardboard taped back on to make sturdy enough covers for the exposed ends. a little janky, but a breakthrough in being able to read the thing comfortably. they really should make a box-set version. the "Subway Reader" edition.

finished Book I (Parts I-IV) last night and it was a blast. loved all the deep dives and tangents into political machines and once-prominent figures. the Al Smith sections could be a short book in themselves, cleanly summing up so much of the transition from local-patronage machine politics to welfare-state New Realism, in an almost offhand way. oh so THAT'S how that happened!

the only major thing that's felt a little garbled so far: Caro really wants both the story of Moses becoming skilled at politics (learning who to not bother ticking off, who to cozy up and open the trough too), and the story of Moses being an unbearable arrogant assshole to everybody around him. there's a pretty good "why he was driven to be so unbearable" section, but it never quite coheres with all the "he had learned his lessons well from Belle Moskowitz" stuff. maybe it's a distinction between learning the legal machinery of *power*, and the finer diplomacy of *politics*... idk.

often when I read something about 20th C. new york city organised crime I find myself trying to square it and its chronological overlap with moses's activity which was a lot like organised crime - I can't recall anything in the caro book about the normal gangsters of the period but surely they rubbed up against each and other not infrequently.

the thing about most people not understanding just how much power moses managed to concentrate in himself and how far his influence stretched - the normal gangsters must have recognised his significance.

I need to re read this

It would be great to get all those cutting room floor pieces, even as a separate text you can buy

You can reread excerpts. I read the Al Smith chapters often.

His Central Park Zoo coda, awww.

Right now I’m working my way through the LBJ books but once I’m done with #4 I’ll tackle this again, maybe over the winter.

I've been wanting to read this for a long time and almost bought this when I was in New York not too long ago, but thankfully remembered the damage it would have done to my limited luggage space. Got home and ordered it from the bookstore instead, yet to crack it. It stares, intimidatingly, from my shelf. Think it'll make a good read this winter.

It will sweep you away.

i kinda wish i hadn't gotten addicted to weighty historical overviews of broad and fascinating topics, i don't actually have the stamina for them and as a result i've kinda given up reading :(

Still proud that I managed to make my way through Gotham. Not that it was a boring or uninteresting read, it was just a long haul. Haven't even considered being ready to tackle Greater Gotham yet tho.

very nice

https://www.curbed.com/article/robert-caro-power-broker-lyndon-johnson-book-interview.html

daily word counts

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/394/d2f/a55da1d6e3c3bbe4e547cf3c96be2b5b98-Planning-Calendar.2x.w710.jpg

Thanks for that link, caek. (lazy)

yeah that was great

can't open, argh.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240911130121/https://www.curbed.com/article/robert-caro-power-broker-lyndon-johnson-book-interview.html

Official digital edition released in four days

I didn’t want to mint a whole new thread for this, but:

If I’m very impressed by Caro’s style as a historical writer/biographer, which other historical writer/biographers should I seek out? I fear that he’s sort of my thing now and am finding that a lot of his peers don’t quite measure up.

Although he lacks Caro's commitment to granularity, Rick Perlstein's quartet of books about American conservatism are excellent.

Oh, yes!

I’ve read some of the Reaganland and it was engaging (and I also have a copy of Nixonland). Though a return to these is pending a moment when Trump is less of a national presence.

Thanks for the reminder, Alfred.

It's a different beast, but Mike Davis' City of Quartz is excellent.

TJ Stiles. All his biographies are great. Start with this one https://www.salon.com/2002/10/15/stiles/

Or, if you are specifically interested in Caro's NY milieu, go to his book about Cornelius Vanderbilt.

if you go into mike davis expecting the qualities of caro you’ll be severely disappointed imo

it’s more the depths of detail & ability to draw connections together in an interesting way that is a somewhat shared quality

like, synthesizing research is an art & they’re both artists but they are not the same type of artist

I do have a Davis book on the shelf somewhere around here that I haven’t read yet…

Yeah, Mike Davis is great

you could basically read the power broker with no knowledge of nyc. whereas in city of glass, davis assumes the reader already knows a lot about los angeles history, almost none of the background is explained. it’s also not a linear narrative, rather a rant that jumps across various time period, with the chapters mostly separated by theme. writing is also really verbose and academic compared to caro. they’re both books about american cities but id say the similarities end there

In a totally different area of interest, I found a book that hit me in a similar way to The Power Broker was Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, about the founding of Australia.

I remember Davis pairing well with Fogelson's LA history /Fragmented Metropolis/, maybe because the latter did provide a lot of that context.

William Cronon's /Nature's Metropolis/, on Chicago, doesn't have the operatic drama of Caro, but is a great, thick, beautifully written book on how landscapes were remade into farms, logging operations, and skyscraper city.

Also, I haven't yet gotten to McCullough's /The Great Bridge/, but by reputation, I think folks who like Caro like that one too.

I think everyone who has this thread bookmarked should check out Mike Davis even though none of his books are as vertically integrated as The Power Broker is. John Faragher’s Eternity Street (about early 19th century LA) and Carey McWilliams’ Southern California: An Island on the Land (published in 1946 and still relevant) kinda get there, but LA doesn’t have an overarching Main Character in the style of Moses. Everyone comes here to make a buck, escape their past, maybe rip off a couple of folks in the process.

Still, in addition to Davis’ City Of Quartz, I’d recommend Ecology Of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, and the chapter in Dead Cities about the fake German city built in the Utah desert to improve the ways firestorms could be generated by the allied bombing campaign (and Churchill’s intervention to keep properties of the upper-class from being targeted).

A couple of heavyweight histories I definitely recommend are William Manchester’s The Arms Of Krupp, a 500 year history of the German weapons manufacturing family and their role in arming the world, and Daniel Yergin’s The Prize, about the oil industry from 1850 to 1990 and how it got that way. I think Caro fans would dig both.

Another Cali book: Didion's Where I Was From---dig past tense---peeling self & other glass onions ov Golden State illusions, introjected false memories/histories etc.

Seconding the recommendation of Yergin’s The Prize. After reading it I felt as if a lot about how the political world works had been illuminated.

I just ordered that Yergin book. Sounds amazing.

yeah i added it to my list

Matthew Rhys Is In Talks With Netflix Over Adaptation Of Robert Caro’s ‘The Power Broker’
https://deadline.com/2025/12/matthew-rhys-netflix-robert-caro-the-power-broker-1236631815/

“There is a select group of us who have approached a very well-known streaming platform,” Rhys said. “But at the moment, dear Mr. Caro, he doesn’t have an issue with handing over the rights to The Power Broker. The agencies and publishing houses do. So at the moment, it’s in this stalemate whereby I know the Flix called Net are trying to acquire the rights to The Power Broker. It’s been pitched. They do want to do it.”

The Power Broker, originally published by Knopf, which is a division of Penguin Random House, is widely considered one of the greatest books of the twentieth century.

In 2011, Oliver Stone was attached to direct a film based on the book for HBO with James Gandolfini and Peter Guber exec producing but it did not make it to screen.

omg i NEED this

Oliver Stone and Gandolfini would have been something.