No shame to Carter, but I was expecting this book to be far more dry. Without giving the impression of embellishment, Caro manages to arrange the facts just so that these characters real people are given tremendous biographical significance.

The introduction is such a ripper:

• 1934 to 1968 unchallenged by any governor of New York State
• $27 billion in public Works personally accepted by Robert Moses, which vastly exceeds any other US official, including FDR
• 45% of all the state parks in the country where in New York State, which was modeled after Moses vision for New York City
• The chief of the interstate highway system project of the 50s and 60s attributed all of the learnings from lectures that Moses gave from the Belmont estate in New York City in 1926

As an appointed rather than an elected official, he was kind of uniquely positioned to make extra-political decisions. He was proud of this, saying that he had never compromised and never would. In his 40 years of public service, he never made a deal.

Ironically, FDR was his biggest opponent during his 40 year reign.

The housing renewal efforts that were required in order to build all of his expressways displaced a quarter of 1 million people from their homes.

Caro astutely points out that of the quarter million probably closer to 350,000 people across all of his public works efforts that were displaced. The overwhelming majority of them were poor minorities and the renewal urban efforts were not comparable if existent at all extent at all, typically being replaced by affluent housing or private interests.

His tunnels, bridges and highways are regarded as some of the best urban improvements of mankind.

While at Oxford, Moses was selected to appear on a panel for decolonizing a lot of British colonies. There, he kind of made a "white man's burden" sort of argument about how he didn't think that any of the crown's subjects are presently, or would be at any time in the near future, capable of governing themselves.

It sounds like Moses had a kind of repulsively an American view of social mobility for the American dream. He believed very strongly in natural intellectual classes, especially as they pertain to capacity for public service. A weird view of democracy.

Moses can be regarded as a founding father of modern day democracy. He is inspirational in the sense that it is all too easy to get bogged down with the mass of bureaucracy. And yet the theory crafted a consolidated government from the ground up and it worked.

With the necessary caveat that he was standing on the shoulders of very competent staffers who he did not credit for much of the legislative purpose that he produced under our house's Mrs. Bell, Mark's office and the mayor or governor Al Smith while he was the chief of staff

With the necessary caviar that he was standing on the shoulders of very competent staffers who he did not credit for much of the legislative purpose that he produced under our house's Mrs. Bell, Mark's office and the mayor or governor Al Smith while he was the chief of staff

Additional caveat of the reforms introduced in the dossier never made it out of committee

Al Smith was the salt of the Earth Hamilton to Moses aristocratic Jefferson

The unlikely duo of the Irish Catholic uneducated, Al Smith, and the highly educated Jewish aristocrat Robert Moses

Al Smith was a party man for Tamanini and Robert Moses was trying to rewrite everything

I'm also very interested in these background, political masters in the way of Silent Charlie Murphy and Bella Moskowitz.

Sadly? Robert Moses, the idealist reformer died under Bell Moskowitz's tutelage, instead becoming a political pragmatic concern or vote rather than truth.

The Taylor estate affair is some Mao Zedong shit from Robert Moses.

Let the commission spend its money elsewhere, it editorials advised Moses, “before it attempts to snatch property that the residents of the Town of babylon intend to keep for their children’s children until the end of time”

HARD

Moses weaponized the Times as an arm of propaganda against private land owners. I don’t even have to qualify that by saying “small” private land owners since frankly that doesn’t matter, but they were.

Kind of similarly to the way that Elon Musk mistakes humanity with humans, it seems like Robert Moses often had great distain for the public whom he was dedicated to serving

Moses hostile takeover of Niagara state park shows his hunger for power. removal of plaques of all the guys who he slandered to get them removed

Annie Oakley has a word or phrase to describe a compensated ticket received as a gift. The name comes from I guess a famous cowboy or actress whose perforated holes in the ticket resembled her silhouette.

Well, Al Smith was campaigning for president, Robert Moses, as the Secretary of State was acting effectively as the stand governor. I lost the presidency, FDR became the governor and hated Moses, but Moses term was not up until well into FDR's governance, and he had consolidated so much power that it would be impossible to eject him without FDR losing much public favor.

He loved the public, but disdained the people.

During LaGuardia's mayorship, Robert Caro characterizes Robert Moses as a right wing conservative. I don't know what his definition of conservative is, since everything that Moses did vastly grew the size of government. However, relative to FDR I feel like pretty much everybody would come across as conservative. Just weird because he was the blueprint for the new deal.

under laguardia, moses begins to act spitefully with impunity. Flaunting his power, politically verbally and physically bullying people (sometimes just because he could), and threatening to resign whenever he didn’t get his way, knowing that this would reflect poorly on whomever he was bracing

250 playgrounds and just 1 in Harlem 0 in Jamaica.

Volume two is about the use and abuse of power, whereas volume one was about the rise to power. So far it's been a lot of Robert Moses, bullying other people, manifesting bridges and parts, as well as excising members of his family from their inheritance.

Codifying nearly absolute power over his sphere of influence by embedding the authority in the bonds that he issued as the Triboro Bridge authority.

tunnel fight led to him blackballing the best tunnel/bridge engineer and annexing the tunnel authority as part of the triburrough bridge auth.

FDR + his wife fought him on this and he condemned their favorite park out of spite

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