  In 1974, Robert Caro published The Power Broker, a critical biography of
Robert Moses's dictatorial tenure as the "master builder" of mid-century New
York. Moses profoundly transformed New York's urban fabric and transportation
system, producing the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge,
the Westside Highway, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Lincoln Center, the UN
headquarters, Shea Stadium, Jones Beach State Park and many other projects.
However, The Power Broker did lasting damage to his public image and today he
remains one of the most controversial figures in city planning history. On
August 26, 1974, Moses issued a turgid 23-page statement denouncing Caro's work
as "full of mistakes, unsupported charges, nasty baseless personalities, and
random haymakers." Moses's original typewritten statement survives today as a
grainy photocopy in the New York City Parks Department archive. To better
preserve and disseminate it, I have extracted and transcribed its text using
optical character recognition and edited the result to correct errors. Here I
compile my transcription of Moses's statement, alongside Caro's reply to it.
