The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Author: Robert A Caro
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 United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars—the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were—even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him—until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.
Richard C. Wade
In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort. —The New York Times Book Review
Washington Post
The feverish hype that dominates the merchandising of arts and letters in America has so debased the language that, when a truly exceptional achievement comes along, there are no words left to praise it. Important, awesome, compelling—these no longer summon the full flourish of trumpets this book deserves. It is extraordinary on many levels and certain to endure.
Eliot Fremont-Smith
The most absorbing, detailed, instructive, provacative book ever published about the making and raping of modern New York City and environs and the man who did it, about the hidden plumbing of New York City and State politics over the last half-century, about the force of personality and the nature of political power in a democracy. A monumental work, a political biography and political history of the first magnitude. --New York Magazine
Philip Herrera
A study of municipal power that will change the way any reader of the book hereafter peruses his newspaper. —Time
Daniel Berger
One of the most exciting, un-put-downable books I have ever read. This is definitive biography, urban history, and investigative journalism. This is a study of the corruption which power exerts on those who wield it to set beside Tacitus and his emperors, Shakespeare and his kings. —Baltimore Evening Sun
What People Are Saying
David Halberstam
Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.
Theodore H. White
A masterpiece of American reporting. It's more than the story of a tragic figure or the exploration of the unknown politics of our time. It's an elegantly written and enthralling work of art.
Jane Jacobs
Apart from the book's being so good as biography, as city history, as sheer good reading, The Power Broker is an immense public service.
Look this: Power Eating or Advance Your Swagger
The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope
Author: Jonathan Alter
This is the story of a political miracle -- the perfect match of man and moment. Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March of 1933 as America touched bottom. Banks were closing everywhere. Millions of people lost everything. The Great Depression had caused a national breakdown. With the craft of a master storyteller, Jonathan Alter brings us closer than ever before to the Roosevelt magic. Facing the gravest crisis since the Civil War, FDR used his cagey political instincts and ebullient temperament in the storied first Hundred Days of his presidency to pull off an astonishing conjuring act that lifted the country and saved both democracy and capitalism.
Who was this man? To revive the nation when it felt so hopeless took an extraordinary display of optimism and self-confidence. Alter shows us how a snobbish and apparently lightweight young aristocrat was forged into an incandescent leader by his domineering mother; his independent wife; his eccentric top adviser, Louis Howe; and his ally-turned-bitter-rival, Al Smith, the Tammany Hall street fighter FDR had to vanquish to complete his preparation for the presidency.
"Old Doc Roosevelt" had learned at Warm Springs, Georgia, how to lift others who suffered from polio, even if he could not cure their paralysis, or his own. He brought the same talents to a larger stage. Derided as weak and unprincipled by pundits, Governor Roosevelt was barely nominated for president in 1932. As president-elect, he escaped assassination in Miami by inches, then stiffed President Herbert Hoover's efforts to pull him into cooperating with him to deal with a terrifying crisis. In the most tumultuous and dramatic presidential transition inhistory, the entire banking structure came tumbling down just hours before FDR's legendary "only thing we have to fear is fear itself" Inaugural Address.
In a major historical find, Alter unearths the draft of a radio speech in which Roosevelt considered enlisting a private army of American Legion veterans on his first day in office. He did not. Instead of circumventing Congress and becoming the dictator so many thought they needed, FDR used his stunning debut to experiment. He rescued banks, put men to work immediately, and revolutionized mass communications with pioneering press conferences and the first Fireside Chat. As he moved both right and left, Roosevelt's insistence on "action now" did little to cure the Depression, but he began to rewrite the nation's social contract and lay the groundwork for his most ambitious achievements, including Social Security.
From one of America's most respected journalists, rich in insights and with fresh documentation and colorful detail, this thrilling story of presidential leadership -- of what government is for -- resonates through the events of today. It deepens our understanding of how Franklin Delano Roosevelt restored hope and transformed America.
The Defining Moment will take its place among our most compelling works of political history.
The New York Times - Ted Widmer
Alter illuminates how Roosevelt made the presidency exciting and responsive and alive. Fifty staffers were needed to handle the mail sent to the Roosevelt White House; under Hoover, this job had belonged to a single employee.
The Washington Post - Alonso L. Hamby
Most Americans believe Roosevelt was a great man and a great president. Alter shows us that in the end magnificent rhetoric and action do not always bring concrete results.
Publishers Weekly
Newsweek senior editor Alter attempts to explore FDR's famous first "hundred days" in office, when the president laid the foundation for national recovery from the Great Depression. Eventually, Alter succeeds in providing a brief consideration of those key months. But exposition dominates: the early chapters recite Roosevelt's biography up until his White House candidacy (the well-known tale of privilege, marriage, adultery and polio). Then Alter chronicles the 1932 election and explores the postelection transition. Only about 130 pages deal with the 100 days commencing March 3, 1933, that the title calls FDR's "defining moment." Alter attaches much weight to a few throwaway phrases in a thrown-away draft of an early presidential speech-one that could, through a particular set of glasses, appear to show FDR giving serious consideration to adopting martial law in response to the monetary crisis. Despite this, Alter goes on to document FDR's early programs, pronouncements and maneuvers with succinct accuracy. The book, however, contains misstatements of historical detail (Alter suggests, for instance, that it was Theodore Roosevelt, rather than Ted Jr., who served as a founder of the American Legion). (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
This isn't a bad book-just an unnecessary one. Shelves runneth over with books on FDR, and new contributions need an angle to stand out. Alter (senior editor, Newsweek) doesn't have one. The start of Roosevelt's presidency is a promising topic but, despite the title, only a third of the book concerns those 100 days, and that doesn't begin until p.207. Most of the book is a biography of Roosevelt to 1933, a topic already expertly handled in Geoffrey C. Ward's A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt. Alter draws connections to later Presidents-he cites his own interviews with Ford and Clinton-but his parallels are forced and irrelevant. The extensive bibliography displays his wide search for grist, but his sources, like his prose, are not finely milled. Rough sections, such as his account of the banking crisis of 1933, leave readers wondering if they ought not read the cited works instead. Worse, factual errors (e.g., Alter's not realizing that between 1886 and 1947 the house speaker was not in the line of presidential succession) create doubts as to the accuracy of the book overall. An optional purchase.-Michael O. Eshleman, Kings Mills, OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The birth of the New Deal, capably recounted. Newsweek editor Alter takes a 100-odd pages before addressing his subject, the fraught three-odd-months that newly inaugurated President Franklin Roosevelt had to push through an ambitious package of social and financial programs before congressional resistance solidified. Once the narrative gets on track, modern readers will understand why FDR was so widely perceived as a usurper; even democrat Eleanor Roosevelt allowed that the country, laid low by the Depression, could use a benevolent dictator, and Roosevelt was no stranger to a bully pulpit. Alter adds that back then it was easy to confuse liberals and conservatives, since, for one thing, "the responsible conservative view of the day was that steep tax increases were essential to balancing the budget." In that view, Roosevelt made a fine conservative, though he accepted a broad range of progressive programs that his liberal brain trust put together: unemployment relief, extensive public-works programs, old-age insurance and a program to formulate minimum-wage guidelines and other labor reforms. He thus inspired, even courted, opposition. But, Alter notes, FDR had something up his sleeve: He withheld 60,000 political patronage jobs customarily shared out to Congress until after the Hundred Days, a most efficient form of keeping legislators in line. Therein lies a key to understanding FDR's character, and his knack for getting what he wanted; the president was a born Machiavellian, so secretive, he once said, that "I never let my right hand know what my left hand does." A good recipe for dictatorship for sure, but FDR kept his own democratic values intact, even as right-wing opponentscalled him "Stalin Delano Roosevelt." Well-written and useful, though William Leuchtenberg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963) remains the unseated-and just as readable-standard. First printing of 75,000
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