Running for Your Life: The Power Broker Vol. II

It’s a joke really, there is no Vol. II.

“The Power Broker” by Robert Caro could use one, though.

Few books in my life have impressed me in the way of this one. The life of New York State power broker Robert Moses laid bare.

It’s dense. At 1,162 pages in paperback, I’ve been reading it since the summer.

I’m an avid, even passionate reader, and I didn’t skim any of these pages. Indeed, the richness of the prose, the depth of the reporting, the insight. Fallen out of love with journalism, with journalists? Read “The Power Broker.”

And here’s the best part. As much as you learn about Robert Moses, there is so much more to say. Thus the idea of a second volume.

There are more files to dig through that promise a whole other level of meaning surrounding how and why – and more important, for whose benefit – decisions were arrived at during the decades that Robert Moses shaped the urban environment in New York State, from Niagara to Massena to the Bronx and Staten Island.

Publishers will tell you, of course, that committing to a book the size of The Power Broker (Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, anyone?) is a fool’s errand.

Well, this fool want’s more of it. With material this rich, the mining should go on, and with it, hopefully a restoration of what it means to be a journalist. How noble the calling can be.

Next: Running for Your Life: Urban Forestry is Not An Oxymoron