Skipped History Meets The Power Broker
A mini special announcement for paying Skippies
Good morning, Skippie!
This September marks a special month in history nerd lore: the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of the infamous city builder, Robert Moses.
To be way too clichéd, I worship Caro’s book. David Halberstam once called it “surely the greatest book ever written about a city.” It’s surely the greatest book I’ve read about a city—a history of how bigotry was built into my home city. The history reverberates far outside of New York, too. Robert Moses inspired billions of dollars worth of construction projects around the country. He shaped the physical structures—and, by extension, the social life—of 20th-century America as much as, if not more than, anyone else.
And now Moses is shaping a new series of videos coming to a small screen near you!
In the spring, I began writing a new series of videos bringing the 1,162 pages of The Power Broker to life. The videos explore Moses’s upbringing, his prejudices, and his rise to and fall from grace. I dive into the many reasons that, despite everything Robert Moses built, the only statue you’ll find of him in or close to New York is, erm, facing a gas station in Babylon, Long Island: