In the Shack With Robert Caro

The Power Broker is turning 50. The final LBJ book is almostwell, he won't say exactly, but he's trying for 900 words a day.

- CHRISTOPHER BONANOS

AS I ARRIVE at Robert Caro’s house, down a rutted, unpaved road in East Hampton, he asks me whether I’d hit any traffic on the Long Island Expressway. I had, and I remark that I’m here to talk about the man who made that happen. Caro offers a wry smile and some coffee, and even before we sit down, we get into a conversation about Robert Moses and the Long Island landscape of potato farms and old estates that his highways converted into exurbs. Caro, of course, grew famous with his first book, The Power Broker, the definitive biography of Moses and the auto-centric New York City he created through unelected iron rule. On September 16, The Power Broker will turn 50, and the New-York Historical Society is marking the anniversary with an exhibition. Even now, Caro can spin off many of the book’s revelations without looking anything up. He reminds me that, when Moses built the LIE, everyone told him to acquire an extra 40 feet of right-of-way to accommodate a light-rail line. The extra land, back then, would have cost little. “He wouldn’t do it. And he built the foundations so lightly that it could never be added.” A few generations later, Long Islanders collectively lose millions of hours to that decision every day.

When I ask him how long he’s had the East Hampton place, Caro tosses off an answer that any writer can appreciate: “1990. Second volume. The first one was the apartment in the city.” He means the payouts from the first two parts of the epic biography