Robert Moses was never elected to any office and yet, for almost half a century, was the single most powerful man in New York’s history.
“The very shoreline of New York was different before Robert Moses came to power. He rammed steel into the muck beneath the rivers and crammed earth and cement into the space that hardened into fifteen thousand acres of new land altering the physical boundaries of the city.
Robert Moses was never a member of the Housing Authority and his relationship with it was only hinted at in the press. But between 1945 and 1958 no site for public housing was selected and no brick of a public housing project was laid without his approval. For seven years between 1946 and 1953 no public improvement of any type – not school or sewer, library or pier, hospital or catch basin – was built by any city agency, even those he didn’t control, unless Robert Moses approved its design and location.”
The subject of the book is Robert Moses, the New York city planner but the hero of the book is the author Robert Caro. Caro was interested in how political power worked but uncovering this was more difficult than he imagined. His subjects sometimes didn’t welcome his attention. Other times he had to dig up long buried facts or discern unseen motives during interviews. Over 40 years numerous biographers had tried to do a biography of Robert Moses. Caro was told “No one who ever wants a contract from the state or city will ever talk to you.” And with that wisdom Caro started interviewing anyway. He had a total of 7 interviews with Robert Moses himself. Caro expected to write the book in 9 months. It took him 7 years to finish. The book went through 3 publishers and two editors and nearly bankrupted Caro. Today this book is considered a masterpiece of investigative biography. Even in 2023 50 years after publication, it sold more than 17,000 copies.
One of the impressive aspects of the book is its size - 1163 pages! So this SDG will read and discuss a small portion, 323 pages, that cover the years 1938 to 1955 when Moses had his greatest influence. For week 6, we will watch a two hour Ric Burns documentary on Moses and La Guardia.