The Power Broker

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, Robert A. Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker (1974), is considered one of the most influential biographies of all time.

Caro begins the life story of Moses with an anecdote about his time at Yale. A star swimmer, Moses announced his intention to convince a sponsor to donate to the school’s general fund using less-than ethical techniques; the team captain orders him not to. Truculent, Moses tells the captain he will quit the team if he’s not allowed to do so. The captain accepts his resignation, and Moses never swims for Yale again. Forty-five years later, Robert F. Wagner is being sworn-in as mayor of New York, and is giving his appointees their oath of office. Moses expects to be named to three positions, but due to activist work against his influence and power, is only sworn in for two. Angry, Moses tells the mayor privately that if he doesn’t get the third appointment, he will resign. The mayor gives in, granting the third position.

Caro describes Moses’s early professional life as one of idealism and a passion to improve New York City. His zeal for reform, however, made political enemies, and at the age of thirty, he was pushed out of his job. Caro argues that this taught Moses that dreams and idealism are worthless without the power to implement them, and so, he spent the rest of his life amassing that power. Caro then details the many ways that Moses personally transformed New York City in the twentieth century—not always in good ways.



Born in 1888, Moses was inspired by his mother, Bella, a pillar of their German-Jewish community in New York City. Caro argues that Moses modeled much of his adult life on his mother, who was dedicated to helping those around her and confident that she knew what they needed better than they did.

Moses attends Yale University and then enters into government service. Initially thwarted by corrupt officials who do not wish him to succeed in his reforms, Moses works for future New York Governor Al Smith, returning years later to government work with a better understanding of the way power works. Moses runs for governor of New York in 1934 but loses the election. He accepts a job with the city government. He is successful at designing and building beautiful public works, such as parks and bridges, on schedule and on budget through the shrewd use of bribery and overlooking inconvenient laws and regulations. He quickly gains a reputation as a man who can handle huge, complex projects and get them done; in the atmosphere of the Great Depression, these projects are considered vital for the state and country’s recovery, giving him immense influence.

Moses uses this influence to build a power base. Never elected to any position, he organizes divisions within the government to be reliant on him, engineering ways to maintain his hold. For example, by law, the government divisions created to fund and build bridges only exist as long as the bonds issued to fund them remain unpaid. Moses establishes a system of refinancing the bonds endlessly in order to keep the division in existence indefinitely, with him running things. Through a succession of governors and mayors, Moses is a near-permanent official who holds, at one point, twelve separate official roles with the city government.



Moses establishes the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which becomes his main base of power. The TBTA has its own police force and staff and is supported by a form of taxation—the tolls collected at the bridges and roads it administers. As a result, Moses operates almost as a shadow government, living a lavish lifestyle despite not accepting a salary for most of his appointments. Meanwhile, Moses has convinced his mother to change her will to cut out his brother Paul, who subsequently spends his life in poverty.

Moses remakes New York City in radical ways. He favors automobiles over public transportation, building many roads and highways, often destroying old neighborhoods in the process. Activists try to limit his power, decrying the influence he has despite never winning an election.

In the 1960s, Moses’s influence begins to wane. Several public defeats tarnish his reputation; support for the demolition of Pennsylvania Station makes him unpopular with the general public. His involvement with the World’s Fair in 1964 is also a fiasco, as the fair never generated the economic boom he predicted; his management of the fair’s finances comes under fire. With Moses weakened, Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller redirect the toll money generated by the TBTA to other city agencies. The TBTA is folded into the MTA, and Moses is promised a leadership role there in exchange for giving up his hold on TBTA—but the promised role never comes to pass.