(Page 135)Īn idea was no good without power behind it, power to make people adopt it, power to reward them when they did, power to crush them when they didn't. Bob Moses was scornful, in short, of what he had been. He was openly scornful of reformers whose first concern was accuracy, who were willing to devote their lives to fighting for principle and who wanted to make that fight without compromise or surrender of any part of the ideals with which they had started it. He was openly scornful of men who hadn't, of men who still worried about the Truth when what counted was votes. And, most of all, he had not sufficiently taken into account the need for power. He had not sufficiently taken into account self-interest.

He had not sufficiently taken into account greed. But Moses had failed in his calculations to give certain factors due weight.

In free and open encounter would not Truth prevail? And he had gotten the hearing. He had really believed that if his system was right-scientific, logical, fair-and if it got a hearing, the system would be adopted. Convinced he was right, he had refused to soil the white suit of idealism with compromise.

Intending to reform the city, he had worked hard and mastered with a supreme mastery reform's techniques. There was no civil service standardization, no great highway along the Hudson, no mothers' shelters in Central Park. The net result of all his work was nothing. 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.įirst published in the USA in 1974, this monumental classic was a Sunday Times bestseller when published in the UK in 2015 and is now widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest books of its kind.One must wait until the evening To see how splendid the day has been. 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. Caro is 'simply one of the best non-fiction books in English of the last forty years' (Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times): a riveting and timeless account of power, politics and the city of New York by 'the greatest political biographer of our times' (Sunday Times) 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 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize a Sunday Times Bestseller 'An outright masterpiece' (Evening Standard)

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