
The Power Broker
Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
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Narrated by:
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Robertson Dean
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By:
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Robert A. Caro
About this listen
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping of twentieth-century New York. One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century.
Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man—an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches—and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself.
Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear—his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as "Triborough"—a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses—an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time—without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system.
Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars—he was undoubtedly America's greatest builder.
This is how he built and dominated New York—before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done.
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Critic reviews
1975, Francis Parkman Prize, Winner
1975, Pulitzer Prize — Biography, Winner
"Caro has written one of the finest, best-researched and most analytically informative descriptions of our political and governmental processes to appear in a generation." (Nicholas Von Hoffman, The Washington Post)
"This is irresistibly readable, an outright masterpiece and unparalleled insight into how power works and perhaps the greatest portrait ever of a world city." (David Sexton, The Evening Standard)
Featured Article: The top 100 classics of all time
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Story
Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
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He makes Bill Gates look like a Pauper!
- By Rick on 11-04-13
By: Ron Chernow
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The Battle for Gotham
- New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs
- By: Roberta Brandes Gratz
- Narrated by: Carol Monda
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, New York City hit rock bottom. Crime was at its highest, the middle class exodus was in high gear, and bankruptcy loomed. Many people credit New York’s master builder Robert Moses with turning Gotham around, despite his brutal, undemocratic. and demolition-heavy ways. Urban critic and journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz contradicts this conventional view. New York City, Gratz argues, recovered precisely because of the waning power of Moses.
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Churchill
- Walking with Destiny
- By: Andrew Roberts
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 50 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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When we seek an example of great leaders with unalloyed courage, the person who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the iconic, visionary war leader immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman, and leader can finally be fully understood.
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Superb Biography
- By Jean on 03-03-19
By: Andrew Roberts
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New York, New York, New York
- Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation
- By: Thomas Dyja
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy, Thomas Dyja - introduction
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Dangerous, filthy, and falling apart, garbage piled on its streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble; New York’s terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next thirty-plus years, though, it became a different place - kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, more like America and less like what it had always been.
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OMG...right on 👍👍👍👍👍
- By howie wine on 04-04-21
By: Thomas Dyja
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jane Jacobs, Jason Epstein - introduction
- Narrated by: Donna Rawlins
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
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Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."
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Fantastic text, dull on audio
- By Meghan on 02-13-15
By: Jane Jacobs, and others
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Avid Reader
- A Life
- By: Robert Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Robert Gottlieb
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other best sellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré - not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy.
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A Lifetime of Reading and Editing
- By David P on 12-06-16
By: Robert Gottlieb
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The Power Brokers
- The Struggle to Shape and Control the Electric Power Industry
- By: Jeremiah D. Lambert
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a century, the interplay between private, investor-owned electric utilities and government regulators has shaped the electric power industry in the United States. Provision of an essential service to largely dependent consumers invited government oversight and ever more sophisticated market intervention. The industry has sought to manage, coopt, and profit from government regulation. In The Power Brokers, Jeremiah Lambert maps this complex interaction from the late 19th century to the present day.
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Excellent Evolutionary Discourse on US Utilities
- By Bala on 10-31-21
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Washington
- A Life
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 41 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. This crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.
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A sad day when my book was done!
- By ButterLegume on 12-13-10
By: Ron Chernow
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Huey Long
- By: T. Harry Williams
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 31 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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He was one of the most extraordinary figures in American political history, a great natural politician who looked, and often seemed to behave, like a caricature of the red-neck Southern politico - and yet he had become, at the time of his assassination, a serious rival to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency. In this "masterpiece of American biography" ( New York Times), Huey Long stands wholly revealed, analyzed, and understood.
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Stunning, Compelling and Relevent
- By Paul on 11-28-11
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- By: Edward Gibbon
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 126 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece. Beginning in the second century A.D. at the apex of the Pax Romana, Gibbon traces the arc of decline and complete destruction through the centuries across Europe and the Mediterranean. It is a thrilling and cautionary tale of splendor and ruin, of faith and hubris, and of civilization and barbarism. Follow along as Christianity overcomes paganism... before itself coming under intense pressure from Islam.
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Masterpiece - Best Audiobook I’ve Listened To
- By Student on 09-18-18
By: Edward Gibbon
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Grant
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 48 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow reveals in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.
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Excellent Book (BUT WHERE IS THE PDF FILES)????
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-17
By: Ron Chernow
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The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson
- The White House Years
- By: Joseph A. Califano Jr.
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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President Lyndon Johnson was bigger than life - and no one who worked for him or was subjected to the "Johnson treatment" ever forgot it. As Johnson's "Deputy President of Domestic Affairs", Joseph A. Califano's unique relationship with the president greatly enriches our understanding of our 36th president. Califano shows listeners LBJ's commitment to economic and social revolution, and his willingness to do whatever it took to achieve his goals.
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LBJ The Greatest President of 20th century
- By David W. Goldstein on 07-28-15
VERY INTERESTING BOOK
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Excellent Narration
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The only reason I did not give this five stars is because there was some coverage that--reading this book many years after it was published--I suspect was left on the cutting room floor. Not much on the Rockaway improvements here, and not a single mention of Jane Jacobs. I will have to follow up by weeding through old Caro interviews to see where those bits went. I'd also be interested in reading some defenses of Moses, just for the sake of equal time.
A few other notes/questions:
1. Why, oh why, is this not available on Kindle? When listening to intense histories I like to be able to refer to the book and notes as I go, and being able to search an ebook for keywords is very helpful in that respect. And also, this is not a book that fits easily into one's purse.
2. The audio performance is ok, but I found it excruciatingly slow, to the point where the voice seemed distorted (perhaps a recording or download glitch?). I found it sounded much more natural when sped up 1.25x (although still a little slow; I listened at 1.5-2x).
3. And finally: This would make a freaking amazing long-form TV series, a modern day, real-world Game of Thrones. Who is sitting on the rights and why isn't it in development with HBO (or Netflix?) already?
A must-read for every New Yorker.
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A must for New Yorkers (with patience)
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Devastating
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Worth every second of time spent listening. Dean's voice seems made for this work. I wouldn't be surprised if Caro handpicked him for the role.
Unforgettable
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Required reading for anyone who considers themselves a "New Yorker."
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Would you listen to The Power Broker again? Why?
Absolutely! great writing and great narration.What was one of the most memorable moments of The Power Broker?
Robert Moses from an idealist to a power monger.What does Robertson Dean bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He brought life to the characters in the book.One of the greatest biography of all times
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What did you love best about The Power Broker?
This was such a wonderful story told about the man behind many of the public works in the NYC-Metro area, which I use every day without giving a second thought to there origins or the man behind it. Robert Caro is easily the greatest biographer I've ever read!What did you like best about this story?
Detailed research that the writer translates into masterful story telling.What does Robertson Dean bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He has a soothing, easy voice, and yet is able to change when appropriate for effect.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
66 hours and change? No way would I want to listen to in one sitting. I wouldn't be able to stand again!Any additional comments?
A wonderful read for anyone who lives in the tri-state area, and especially, for those who go through the daily grind of commuting for work in that area. It's an eye-opening read!Master Biographer, Robert Caro!
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What made the experience of listening to The Power Broker the most enjoyable?
Basically, if you love Caro's LBJ's books, you'll love "The Power Broker" (and vice versa). Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson's backgrounds were completely different, but both men wielded power in similar ways -- ruthlessly and effectively. Both were capable of great compassion and great cruelty. People who tried to stop them were crushed. And the press excused them over and over again until their destructive ways could no longer be excused or concealed. Caro is brilliant, but he really doesn't know how to edit information. The book was 1,300 pages (66 hours) but even that was cut down from its original 1,700+ pages, and you get the distinct impression that it could have been 3,000 pages or more if Caro could have sold a book that long. Caro, like this book's subject, doesn't really know when to stop. While I appreciate all the detail, the slow pace gets tiresome after awhile. Like most people, Moses's most interesting years were the early ones. As the story goes on, he simply acquires more and more power as he transforms from an anti-corruption idealist to a thoroughly corrupt demagogue of the worst kind -- the kind who cannot be voted out of office. The last 20 hours or so are simply painful to listen to. Moses's claims to be apolitical and always acting in the interest of the taxpayer is revealed to be, in Caro's devastating introduction, "a gigantic hoax."The book is basically an indictment of American journalism for naively believing all the lies and deceptions that people in power like Moses yield. It was only when younger reporters actually started taking a critical view of Moses's activities in the late 1950s that his reputation started to take some well-deserved hits. But Moses had been raping the taxpayer without their knowledge for 30 years by then. "The Power Broker" will make you look at your city's roads, bridges, and freeways in a different light, and make you wonder what the "Parks Commissioner" in your town was really like.What does Robertson Dean bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The reading by Robertson Dean was superb.Good, but too long
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