The Power Broker
Technical:
- ID: 99
- Added: 2025-09-02
- Updated: 2025-09-02
- ISBN: 9781847923646
- Publisher: Random House
- Published: 2015-07-02
- Reviews: 3
The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro is a riveting and timeless account of power, politics and the city of New York by âe~the greatest political biographer of our timesâe(tm) (Sunday Times) âe" chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time and by the Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest Books of the Twentieth Century. Now also a Sunday Times Bestseller. The Power Broker tells the story of Robert Moses, the single most powerful man in New York for almost half a century and the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever once being elected to office, he created for himself a position of supreme and untouchable authority, allowing him to utterly reshape the city of New York, turning it into the city we know today, while at the same time blighting the lives of millions and remaining accountable to no one. First published in 1974, this monumental classic is now widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest books of its kind.
Reviews
Pull quotes
- The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man.
- The accumulation of power became an end in itself.
- Moses brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape.
Pull quotes
- An understanding that ideas-dreams-were useless without power to transform them into reality.
- The wealth of the empire enabled Moses to keep many city officials in fear.
- Moses’ genius for organizing corruption gave it a new force that bent the entire city government off the democratic bias.
Pull quotes
- The Power Broker is just such a baggy monster, but there is nothing accidental or arbitrary about it.
- Some may think it a waste of time to read it; others will find it indispensable.
- The book reveals the intricate mechanisms of political power and urban development.