Review of Power Broker and Show Me A Hero
This summer I read an all time great book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Writing about this book was one of the first blog posts I envisioned when designing this blog. It was also a major upset when Power Broker did not top my list of books in 2015, but I suspect it will only rise in esteem over time. In my mind, I have also begun linking it with arguably my favorite piece of media that debuted in 2015: the HBO mini-series, Show Me A Hero.
The Power Broker is a biography of Robert Moses, a historical figure I had previously never heard of, but now constantly see references to. Moses, the chief urban planner in New York City serving in various roles from 1920's to the 1960's, was a cross between Leslie Knope and J. Edgar Hoover. He began as a progressive reformer, writing legislation in New York State as an aide to Governor Al Smith. As part of his reformist agenda, he championed the creation of park space. This eventually transitioned him into the head of Long Island Park Commission, where he designed a masterpiece recreational development.
His story is a cautionary tale of the consolidation of power. Parks commissioner led him into transportation, building parkways through the state. Soon, he designed and got himself appointed to Triborough Bridge Authority. He amassed power by obtaining funding from major banks to build bridges and kept the revenue to fund his own other pet projects. He soon got himself placed in charge of the New York City Housing Authority, and was responsible for some of the slum clearing projects I discussed in a previous post. Except for a bizarre campaign for governor, his influence only grew during between the 1930's and 1950's. Mayors relied on him to accomplish their agenda. Even Franklin Roosevelt wanted to deny New Deal funding to the city because of a longstanding distaste for Moses from his days in the New York State Legislature, but was eventually forced to back down.
Like most stories about absolute power, Moses is corrupted and eventually falls from grace. Caro describes Moses refusal to help his own brother's career, though he is a qualified engineer, due to childhood competition. He uses his own public parks to luxuriously entertain politicians and other visitors of note. By the 1960's, Moses overreaches with a disastrous Worlds Fair, a plan to over-run a popular section of Central Park. Finally, pressure from a combination of Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brother David Rockefeller, the head of Chase Bank, prevent the construction of a bridge, folding the Bridge Authority into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and effectively ending Moses' grip on the city.
The author, Robert Caro, is some crazy mix of Dorris Kerns Goodwin and David Simon (creator of The Wire), a careful and analytic historian with a skill for telling a compelling story about a totally messed up system. The book is so compelling because of the narrative and context that Caro weaves the whole way through thousand page book (and it's a dense thousand pages). Caro argues that Moses was obsessed with automobiles and over-invested in parkways and bridges at a time when further investment in public transportation would have been advantageous. He also builds a compelling case that Moses' plans were intentionally racist with highways that cut through an immigrant neighborhoods. Say nothing of the revenue that Moses amassed to build his pet projects: it could have helped New York City weather brutal budget deficits and cuts to services.
Caro makes these critiques within a sprawling history of New York. The first part of the book is as much a biography of Al Smith, the progressive Governor of New York that I had also never head of, as it is about Moses. Caro's version of Smith's story made me think that in 9 out 10 alternative histories of the country, Al Smith would have been been the transformational president in modern America and FDR would have been some footnote.
Caro does it all with some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. Take, for example, this excerpt of his description of Battery Park
His story is a cautionary tale of the consolidation of power. Parks commissioner led him into transportation, building parkways through the state. Soon, he designed and got himself appointed to Triborough Bridge Authority. He amassed power by obtaining funding from major banks to build bridges and kept the revenue to fund his own other pet projects. He soon got himself placed in charge of the New York City Housing Authority, and was responsible for some of the slum clearing projects I discussed in a previous post. Except for a bizarre campaign for governor, his influence only grew during between the 1930's and 1950's. Mayors relied on him to accomplish their agenda. Even Franklin Roosevelt wanted to deny New Deal funding to the city because of a longstanding distaste for Moses from his days in the New York State Legislature, but was eventually forced to back down.
Like most stories about absolute power, Moses is corrupted and eventually falls from grace. Caro describes Moses refusal to help his own brother's career, though he is a qualified engineer, due to childhood competition. He uses his own public parks to luxuriously entertain politicians and other visitors of note. By the 1960's, Moses overreaches with a disastrous Worlds Fair, a plan to over-run a popular section of Central Park. Finally, pressure from a combination of Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brother David Rockefeller, the head of Chase Bank, prevent the construction of a bridge, folding the Bridge Authority into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and effectively ending Moses' grip on the city.
The author, Robert Caro, is some crazy mix of Dorris Kerns Goodwin and David Simon (creator of The Wire), a careful and analytic historian with a skill for telling a compelling story about a totally messed up system. The book is so compelling because of the narrative and context that Caro weaves the whole way through thousand page book (and it's a dense thousand pages). Caro argues that Moses was obsessed with automobiles and over-invested in parkways and bridges at a time when further investment in public transportation would have been advantageous. He also builds a compelling case that Moses' plans were intentionally racist with highways that cut through an immigrant neighborhoods. Say nothing of the revenue that Moses amassed to build his pet projects: it could have helped New York City weather brutal budget deficits and cuts to services.
Caro makes these critiques within a sprawling history of New York. The first part of the book is as much a biography of Al Smith, the progressive Governor of New York that I had also never head of, as it is about Moses. Caro's version of Smith's story made me think that in 9 out 10 alternative histories of the country, Al Smith would have been been the transformational president in modern America and FDR would have been some footnote.
Caro does it all with some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. Take, for example, this excerpt of his description of Battery Park
If you got up and walked a little deeper into the park, suddenly before you, there through the trees was the heavy blue-green swell of the sea, and that rhythmic, restless sound, at once peaceful and intense, was the lapping of waves against the shore, and all at once, only steps from the dead gray walls of Lower Manhattan, you were standing at the edge of a broad and busy harbor: crisscrossing the waves were stubby tugboats, freighters with derricks and masts a tall forest on their decks, speedy motor-boats skimming from crest to crest, gaily painted ferries, private steam yachts, white-pained and glistening, giant gleaming ocean liners, so big that sides were moving cliffs. Everywhere there were bright flags— the pennons and burgess of the yachts, the tricolor of the Normandie and the Union Jack of the Queens, the colors of a dozen other foreign nations—and all fluttering against the blue of sky. It was a panorama of vastness and beauty in the sun, of drama in storms, when the tossing whitecaps that stretched to the horizon, the howling of the wind that filled your ears and the smash of waves against the piers at your feet that made you remember with a start that Manhattan was only an island and that you were standing at its very tip. And at night, with the towering stature of Liberty Enlightening the World floodlit from pedestal to torch, and the rows of lamps on the ferry-boats gliding across the dark waters, the view from the Battery was, as one of the reformers put it, "a thing of beauty never to be forgotten"
I compare Caro to Simon deliberately, because I can't help contrast Moses to the main character of Show Me A Hero. The protagonist of this story, the one time Mayor of Yonkers New York Nick Wassiko (played by Oscar Isaac, probably my favorite actor right) is in some ways similar to Moses, a politician and some one who seeks increasing power. But in many other ways, he is the other side of the coin. Wassiko is a city counsel member when a court order is issued, telling the city to construct additional public housing, in wealthier and whiter areas of the suburb. He is elected mayor against a long time incumbent by promising to appeal the order the Supreme Court. Upon being elected, he realizes that the fight will bankrupt the city and instead dives fully into the cause, at great political cost to himself. Much like Caro did with Power Broker, Simon shows the multifaceted reaction in the city. He presents a powerful portrayal of citizens whose lives' would be affected by the change and how various politicians rose to challenge or manipulated it for their own gain.
Though the subjects of these works differ in their approach to governing, the two works pay incredible attention to how the minutia of decisions about urban issues can have large consequences for citizens.
Though the subjects of these works differ in their approach to governing, the two works pay incredible attention to how the minutia of decisions about urban issues can have large consequences for citizens.
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