New Inspiration From A Long Time Hero

Just in the opening intro to Robert Caro’s Working, I was inspired to take on a project I’d put off for a couple of years now.  Caro reads his audio book and talks about how when writing the Power Broker he realized he needed to document the human cost of all the parkways and bridges and slum clearance Robert Moses built.  I have such a project to pursue in Anchorage.

I guess I’m getting ahead of myself.  My bookclub is reading Working this month, and while the time zones don’t work out for me to zoom in, Caro has been a hero of mine for just about 50 years.  Caro’s first big book - The Power Broker - is about Robert Moses who created  a mesh of overlapping ‘authorities’ - park authorities, transportation authorities, port authorities - that gave him a working income that he controlled and the power to create public works projects that transformed the landscape of New York City.  I should be clear - Caro never found any indication that Moses was in this business to make money, but rather to fulfill his visions of how to create infrastructure that would improve life for New Yorkers.  They money he made through tolls and bonds went to build his vision.  

Caro tells us in the intro that he wanted to understand how Caro had wielded so much power for close to 50 years, power over mayors, governors, and other elected  officials, though he had never been elected to any office.  He talks about advice he  (Caro) got early on about doing research on documents - read every page.  

Caro worked full time on The Power Broker for over five years.  It came out in Fall of 1974 about when I’d finished my Masters in Public Administration and was working on my doctorate.  And I would have read it right after it came out - maybe the Spring of 1975.  And as I started teaching as a doctoral student, The Power Broker, at least parts of it (it’s over 1100 pages) were part of the readings in my intro class until I retired.  One of the questions I had about the book - as did many others - was how did Caro find out all the stuff he had on Moses.  This book answers that question 

I’ve mentioned “Thick Description” several times lately, and as I listened to Caro talking about the need to get the stories of the people Moses displaced with his projects, I realized this was an example of thick description as well.  (I hadn’t thought about that before since I’d been using Caro’s book long before I’d heard about thick description.). https://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-am-i-who-are-you.