Stephen

If you grew up in the New York area, as I did, whether you've even heard of him or not, Robert Moses had a dramatic impact on your life. Virtually every highway in NY and Long Island is where it is because Moses said it should be and most parks are either there because of Moses or look that way they do because of him.

Moses was a controversial figure, to be sure, and Caro pulls no punches in criticizing him thoroughly and harshly in many cases (a Moses sympathizer might argue that the entire book is one long hit piece). But the book also brilliantly chronicles the story of one of the great bureaucrats in the world history; a man who simply know how to get things done and get them done his way, come Hell or high water. Elliot Spitzer once said that if a Moses biography would be written today, it would be entitled

The way Caro traces the development of Moses' personality from young good government idealist to power-obsessed king of his own feifdom.

The confrontation with Wagner on inauguration day over the appointment to the city planning board summed up Moses in a single incident.You could hate the man and have more power than the man, but you still couldn't resist doing what he ordered you to do.

This is not really a funny or sad book, though some of the anecdotes are pretty funny.