New this month: Scandal rocks an elite British boarding school in The Divines. The Five Books of (Robert) Moses alternates between the outrageous present of Rescue City and earlier in the twentieth century, detailing the events leading up to the destruction of Manhattan. He had no personal interest in money, and coming from a wealthy family had refused a salary. The cruelty with which this was done was later exposed and led to his downfall. Please try your request again later. The art is really spectacular, and the colors used really capture that mid-century public works aesthetic that Moses brought to his projects. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. —David Halberstam. The book to read to get to know Robert Moses is the Pulitzer-prize winning biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1975), which is a tome, 1348 pages, one of the great biographies, and who will bother to read it? Please try again. Gr 6 Up—This biography of urban planner Robert Moses effectively demonstrates why he was one of the most polarizing figures in New York's history. The book to read to get to know Robert Moses is the Pulitzer-prize winning biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1975), which is a tome, 1348 pages, one of the … This book’s illustrations are gorgeous. Good for history buffs and people who are interested in urban planning. Throughout his career his personal power was protected by foresight, and the killer clause. 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. Unable to add item to List. Everything is really just touched on, really, though it is lovely to see and may whet your appetite to read a longer bio. Again, brief and light but points you in an interesting direction. Power was so important to him that to be excluded from it was agony, and he became a ghost haunting a landscape he had built. He asked Robert Moses to condemn the land under a provision of a federal act called the Federal Housing Act of 1949, whereby governments could condemn land, blighted or slum properties … Please try again. It's not bad per se, just easily forgotten. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Light is flung across floors and skies and dances around the temples of a number of political figures as they emerge from shadows or move against windows. Moses helped build Long Island's Meadowbrook State Parkway. He built vast and luxurious venues where previously there had been just sand, with building materials and leisure facilities second to none. And although he was most active during the Depression years, money never seemed to be a problem. Without his creation of the parkways and Long Island Expressway on Long Island, I probably wouldn't live out on the island today. Please try again. Having hardly heard of Robert Moses and not being very familiar with NY politics I was a bit dubious about wading through 1200 pages but in fact the story and the character of the man are fascinating. I just want to offer a practical suggestion for reading it because there is no kindle version (WHY???) This was a more balanced view of Robert Moses than I expected from the cover; an example of a person with such a long, powerful career that they both can't help but be passed by a younger generation but also refuse to cede power in a way that makes that go badly for all the people he served. Moses’ career, which ran from the mid-1920s through the early 1970s, has been written about extensively in Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and also in the best-selling 2014 artist/ comic-book-style biography, Robert Moses… Join Facebook to connect with Róbert Moses and others you may know. Pretty much everything about the text within leaves much to be desired, from questionable facts and explanations of events to sentence structure and formatting. Moses despised trains and buses so mass transit was never part of his plans, as anyone lining up for a cab at JFK can testify. The idealist of the early chapters soon turns into something of a monster with huge prejudices against lower class people, blacks and ethnics. Welcome back. Long an admirer of Robert A Caro’s biographies of LBJ, I confess I had ignored The Power Broker because at first glance a book about a man who built bridges, roads, parks and civic buildings sounded bland compared to the complex personality of Lyndon Johnson. Robert A. Caro reflects on writing his classic book about Robert Moses’s influence on New York. THE FIVE BOOKS OF (ROBERT) MOSES by Arthur Nersesian ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2020 Three decades in the making, Nersesian’s pentalogy—one book for each New York borough—imagines … That impression was so strong that I went and read about Fountainhead, to see if there is a connection between Rand's hero and Moses and to check the dates (of Moses biography and Ayn Rand's book publication). In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. The myriad financial deals and bond issues can become dense at times but they were directly related to the freedom given him by the structure of an ‘Authority’, compared to a municipality, city or state administration. I had to restart it 3 times to get through. Well I found this to be a real ding dong of a book. I came to this after reading Rober Caro's Working and prior to that the 4 volumes to date of his biography of Lyndon B Johnson. The Moses story is expansive and even Caro had to make substantial omissions in his 1200 page epic, The Power Broker. Documentary about architect Robert Moses who is responsible for public works projects like the Lincoln Center and the United Nations in New York. A more thorough knowledge of Moses's life would have helped in understanding many of the events that were covered, or referred to. Free download or read online The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York pdf (ePUB) book. Did not find anything (but my search was lazy). Christin does a balanced job at analyzing both sides of the character of Moses' projects, abundant in both vision and cynicism. Robert Moses, which I knew nothing about, seems one of those individualistic heroes (that objectivism idealizes) that fight against the status quo and "mediocrity". A dark secret spans several... To see what your friends thought of this book, Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City. It also does a reasonable job in pointing out his short-comings. This book explains a major component of why and how the betrayal occurred by focusing on the man who was both the cause and the victim of the betrayal, a powerful bureaucrat little known outside of metropolitan New York, Robert Moses.The book details Moses… Of course it lacks the detail, nuance and notes of Caro's tome, but I'd happily use both books together to talk about some of these issues. I'm not sorry I read it - but it IS very long and it is about someone who was evidently quite remarkable but who is mostly memorable for having built much of the infrastructure of New York. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Robert Moses redefined the New York City area in the 20th Century creating most of the parkways, bridges, parks, etc in the metro area. And overall it is delivered with a very good prose, sober yet bright, faultless and elegant. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of 1344 pages and is available in Paperback format. Robert Caro is one of very few authors who can entertain a reader for over 1000 long pages about a mundane topic like urban politics. Refresh and try again. Some of the visuals are really cool. I agree with him. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this book, as I'm not entirely convinced the creators knew exactly where to take this biography. Chapter 26 is a fascinating description of his relationship with his older brother, who he destroyed, and his mother, and only a psychiatrist could unravel the darkness there. 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 … Very impressive biography - but perhaps of less interest if you are not interested in NY, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 10, 2019. Before publication, Caro, largely unknown at the time, dared to challenge the magazine's legendary editor, William Shawn, over his changes to Caro's … I've never read Caro, I've never read Jane Jacobs (both these things need to change...), but this seemed a simple enough illustration of the issues of urban planning in New York City in the mid 20th century so that even a child could understand. For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, has three times won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best “exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.” In 2010 President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal, stating at the time: “I think about Robert Caro and reading. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Photograph: AP. Moses, who was instrumental in shaping modern New York City, is depicted in Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning book … From the subway to the skyscraper, from Manhattan’s Financial District to the Long Island … December 23rd 2014 Take my word for it, I lugged this thing all around the world, through Europe and the USA, what a mistake that was. 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