The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is a 1974 biography of Robert Moses by Robert Caro. The book focuses on the creation and use of power in New York local and state politics, as witnessed through Moses' use of unelected positions to design and implement dozens of highways and bridges, sometimes at great cost to the communities he nominally served. It has been repeatedly named one of the best biographies of the 20th century, and has been highly influential on city planners and politicians throughout the United States. The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Synopsis The Power Broker traces Moses' life from his childhood in Connecticut to his early years as an idealistic advocate for Progressive reform of the city's corrupt civil service system. According to Caro, Moses' failures there, and later experience working for future New York Mayor Jimmy Walker in the State Senate and Governor of New York Al Smith taught him how to acquire and wield power in order to achieve his goals. By the 1930s, Moses had earned a reputation as a creator of public parks in both the city and state, and later long-sought projects like the Triborough Bridge (later renamed Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), but at the price of his earlier integrity by circumventing and creation of sources of political power, as seen in his work in the creation and expansion of New York's public authorities. Caro ultimately portrays Moses as an appointed bureaucrat who, through his reputation for getting large construction projects done, amassed so much power over the years that the many elected officials whom he supposedly reported to instead became dependent on him. He consistently favored automobile traffic over mass transit and human and community needs. While bragging that he served in his many public jobs (save as New York City Parks Commissioner) without compensation, he lived like a king and similarly enriched those individuals in public and private life who aided him. Caro pays ample tribute to Moses for his intelligence, political shrewdness, eloquence and hands-on, if somewhat aggressive, management style, and gives full credit for his earlier achievements, but he has an ambivalent view of the man. The book is 1,336 pages long (only two-thirds of the original manuscript), and provides documentation of its assertions in most instances, which Moses and his supporters attempted to refute. Origins As a reporter for Newsday