About the book
How Robert Moses, never elected to any office, often came to hold more power in New York than its mayors and even its governors is the subject of Robert A. Caro's 1974 biography. Caro shows Moses turning public authorities into a political machine that worked almost as a fourth branch of government, backed by banks, contractors, unions and the press. Moses built dozens of highways and bridges, among them the Triborough Bridge, sometimes at a high price for the communities he was supposed to serve, and favored cars over mass transit. The project began when Caro, as a Newsday reporter, covered a bridge across Long Island Sound that Moses championed. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975.
It appears on a list of every book Barack Obama recommended during his presidency. Ryan Holiday spent 15 days reading it at 20 and counted it among the most magnificent books he had read, and Mark Manson valued how it uses one man's life to study the nature of power.
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This book has 3 recommendations
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
It took me 15 days to read all 1,165 pages of this monstrosity that chronicles the rise of Robert Moses. I was 20 years old. It was one of the most magnificent books I’ve ever read. Moses built just about every other major modern construction project in New York City. The public couldn’t stop him, the mayor couldn’t stop him, the governor couldn’t stop him, and only once could the President of the United States stop him. But ultimately, you know where the cliché must take us. Robert Moses was an asshole. He may have had more brain, more drive, more strategy than other men, but he did not have more compassion. And ultimately power turned him into something monstrous.
Recommended by Barack Obama (Former USA President)
Source: Every book Barack Obama has recommended during his presidency
Mark Manson (Author)
The biography of Robert Moses, the most powerful man in New York City for most of the 20th century. The book uses his life to look at the nature of power.
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