Caro's Megabook on Robert Moses

   I’m now past page 600 of Robert Caro’s book on Robert Moses, about half-way through its text. (There are an additional hundred pages of notes plus an extensive index.)  When I’m done, this will make the longest continuous one volume book I can recall reading. But it’s the wrong question to ask whether Moses, a  New York politician of the first half of the 20^th century, merits as much prose as might be devoted to a Napoleon biography.

  The Power Broker, in all of its unwieldy girth, is not really a biography, but the accounting of Moses’s political and economic activities while serving in several positions in and around  New York City and how his personality shaped his actions and how they in turn affected his personality. That calls for the introduction of a large number of “characters”—a huge number—who were active then—a lot or a little.

   But the direction of the flow seems to be toward some sort of nadir of the book’s “hero.” While there are plenty of sections that give an account of Robert Moses’ inappropriate willfulness, there is no sign as yet of the nadir that accounts for the book’s subtitle, “Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” I fully intend to read the rest of the book, but I must say that much of that is not a pleasant experience.