John Masko writes in the Claremont Review of Books:
* Every biographer dreams of upending the consensus view of a prominent historical figure. Rare indeed is the writer who succeeds at this task as triumphantly as Robert Caro did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, published in September 1974, one month after Richard Nixon was driven from the presidency, at a time when Americans were primed to think the worst of governmental leaders. The book’s subtitle, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, made clear Caro’s intention to upend established judgments about Moses. For most of his career, Moses had been spoken of as the champion of New York’s ascendancy during the first half of the 20th century. Caro instead cast him as a lead villain in the drama of New York’s stagnation and decay in the 1960s and ’70s.
* The uncomfortable fact is that owing to Moses’s singular combination of organizational genius and personal intransigence, the only realistic alternative to his projects being built the way he wanted them was nothing at all.
First, there is the matter of money. Moses mastered the financial potential of the public authority—a quasi-private business structure entrusted with the administration of public works—in a way that no public official managed before or since…
Second, in a state with a talent for wrapping red tape around virtually every government task, Moses had a knowledge of laws and regulations and how to use them for the public benefit unparalleled by any state legislator or public official in his day
Third, there was Moses’s vision. From his earliest time working in New York City government, few days went by when Moses was not out in the field, in search of underappreciated parcels of land or natural resources that might be turned into parks or thoroughfares. His deep understanding of public needs and how to marshal those resources to meet them, and of how to link his projects together into a cohesive whole that could redefine a city and a state, was unique.
Fourth, there were his project management skills—finding builders he could trust and motivating them to work at seemingly superhuman speed to fulfill his vision…
* …it is no overstatement to credit Moses with saving New York. Through his parks, parkways, and housing complexes, he made an unlivable city livable. Unlike any other city in the world that experienced an equivalent population spike to New York’s (say, London in the 19th century or Rio de Janeiro in the 20th), Moses’s New York accommodated its population spike without shantytowns, mass homelessness, or squalor.
Meanwhile, his bridges and highways enabled New York to continue growing the local economy that would make the city a decent place to live for its immigrants’ children and grandchildren.
