The power broker moses
•
Robert A Caro’s epic account of the life of Robert Moses, the man central to shaping the physical fabric and governance of 20th century New York, is both scholarly and highly readable. It is considered a definitive account of the play of power in the making of the greatest world city at the height of the American Century. The interplay of history and personality, of grand vision compellingly and painstakingly pursued through the lens of a life story, means The Power Broker can at times evoke the brilliant writing of Philip Roth.
Moses built 14 Expressways, hundreds of public parks, swimming pools and scores of other developments, including Triborough and Verrazano Bridges. He transformed the physical landscape of New York City, commissioning projects that embody some of New York’s finest historical architecture and landscape. His impact on New York draws comparisons with Haussmann’s remodeling of Paris.
The reach of Caro’s research is as remarkable as the extent of the works; the
•
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Paperback
One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.
In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the
•
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
The Power Broker
Robert Caro’s monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America’s City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man—an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal ramverk of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of