Caro’s book on Robert Moses, a city planner who reshaped New York, is also a reflection on “the dangers of unchecked power,” and remains more resonant and relevant than ever.
When Robert Caro was writing “The Power Broker,” his 1974 biography of the urban planner Robert Moses, he often heard a deflating refrain.
“I must have heard a hundred times, nobody’s going to read a book about Robert Moses,” Caro said on a recent morning. “And I really did believe what people said, that nobody would read the book. I did believe that.
“Now they tell me it’s in its 74th printing,” he added brightly. “That’s a lot of books.”
Five decades after its publication, “The Power Broker” endures as a revered classic, prized as much for its elegant, novelistic prose as its blunt lessons on the uses and abuses of political power. The book that Caro feared might never be published went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, sell hundreds of thousands of copies and influence generations of journalists, historians and politicians.
Now, in an astonishing turn for a 50-year-old book and its 88-year-old author, “The Power Broker” seems more popular and relevant than ever. Caro’s iconic portrait of Moses — a megalomaniacal city planner who reshaped New York City with his bridges and expressways, often destroying communities that stood in his way — has inspired video and board games, a Broadway play and a “Repeal Robert Moses” movement, led by an organization that aims to reclaim the city from cars.
Want to hear more from Robert Caro about “The Power Broker”?
Listen to his interview on the Book Review podcast, where he talks about his experience writing the 1974 biography, grappling with its legacy and more.
This year, “The Power Broker” is being celebrated with an installation at the New-York Historical Society, which features a selection of handwritten notes, photographs and edited manuscript pages from Caro’s archives. A viral podcast series about the book, created by the “99 Percent Invisible” host and “Power Broker” superfan Roman Mars, has drawn an enormous audience, with more than four million downloads. So far this year, “The Power Broker” — which spans 1,286 pages — has sold more than 40,000 copies, far outpacing its sales in recent years and beating many new releases. Some cultural critics have declared that 2024 is “the Year of ‘The Power Broker’.”
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