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User:Czar/drafts/Publication of The Power Broker

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Research

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External videos
  The author speaks on C-SPAN, 1998
  The author on mid-1900s New York politics

Robert Caro spent about eight years on The Power Broker. He had originally estimated the project to take nine months. A former Newsday reporter, Caro realized that the parks commissioner, Robert Moses, wielded more power than the governors and mayors under which he served for four decades, accomplishing feats of civic engineering that they could not, shaping New York with highways, bridges, and new parks while displacing entire communities.[1]

Moses initially did not cooperate with Caro, who persisted even as Moses threatened those who spoke with the author. Though Moses's papers were off-limits, Caro found carbon copies in a garage. Eventually Moses spoke with Caro seven times. Once Caro addressed a disreputable business deal with Moses, Caro was shut out.[1]

Over the many years of research, Caro's family went through periods of hardship. His wife, Ina, sold their house.[1]

Publication

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While commissioning nonfiction for Simon & Schuster, editor Richard Kluger proposed Caro's biography of Moses. Though his boss, Robert Gottlieb, doubted the book's audience, Kluger bought the book for a small advance. Years later, he left with the contract for Atheneum Books. After Kluger left Atheneum to become a writer, Caro's agent pitched the book to Gottlieb at Knopf, who said he saw its potential after reading several pages.[2] He was particularly impressed by the meticulous depth of Caro's research.[3] When he pressed about one anecdote—how Moses's mother remarked out loud upon reading of a court judgment against her son in the newspaper—Caro told his editor about how he cross-referenced a list of people in the area against the phone book, spoke with them all, and had found the person who had delivered the newspaper that morning and overheard her remark.[4]

Gottlieb and Caro cut about 350,000 words[1] of material from the book over the course of a full year to make the overall volume bindable and salable. Gottlieb told Caro that while they could stir enough interest in one book about Moses, two volumes would be difficult, though the author and editor both appreciated the extra material. The unedited manuscript, over one million words in length, stacked nearly to three feet in height.[2] In often heated arguments,[5] Gottlieb and Caro debated down to punctuation and how much repetition readers would need without feeling patronized.[6] Gottlieb continued as Caro's editor for the next four decades, through Caro's five-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson.[5]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Thomas 2019.
  2. ^ a b Gottlieb 2016, p. 112.
  3. ^ Gottlieb 2016, p. 113.
  4. ^ Gottlieb 2016, pp. 113–114.
  5. ^ a b Alter 2016.
  6. ^ Gottlieb 2016, pp. 112–113.

Bibliography

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  • Alter, Alexandra (September 23, 2016). "Robert Gottlieb: Avid Reader, Reluctant Writer". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  • Gottlieb, Robert (2016). Avid Reader: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-27992-9.
  • Thomas, Evan (May 17, 2019). "Biographer Robert Caro on his own life's work". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286.

Further reading

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