| For much of the twentieth century, the most powerful person in New York wasn’t the mayor or the governor, nor was it a celebrity or a C.E.O. The urban planner Robert Moses was, at his peak, hardly accountable to anyone, despite his almost inescapable impact on the region’s daily life. Across decades as an unelected official, Moses built housing and highways, parks and playgrounds, bridges and beaches, as well as Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, and the U.N. But while he transformed the city and its surroundings in many ways for the better, he also left behind large areas permanently disfigured by congestion and sprawl. To achieve his vision, he forced hundreds of thousands from their homes, evictions that disproportionately harmed racial minorities and the poor, exacerbating inequalities that continue today. In July, 1974—half a century ago this month—The New Yorker began publishing “The Power Broker,” Robert A. Caro’s epic four-part series about Moses’s life and transformations of the city. An expanded version, released as a book that fall, won a Pulitzer Prize and quickly became a seminal work of biography, perennially reissued and debated. Although the series focusses on a uniquely New York character, “The Power Broker'” gained and retains wider relevance as a chronicle of how influence is acquired, exerted, and, sometimes, lost. Thanks to its sweeping narrative and vivid details, it has become a case study that transcends time and place. “In terms of personal conception and completion,” Caro writes, “Robert Moses was unquestionably America’s most prolific physical creator. He was America’s—perhaps the world’s—greatest builder.” “But,” Caro continues, “what did he build?” | 
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