Reviews for Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York

The average rating for Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-10 00:00:00 David Nanberg Robert Moses and the Modern City is a collection of pro-Moses essays that was published in conjunction with an exhibition in 2007. It marked the first major publication on Moses since Robert Caro's magisterial biography The Power Broker. The book is unfortunately a mixed bag. For my taste, the authors try a little too hard to provide a revisionist view of Moses. They argue that he can't be blamed for his car-centric vision ("The great builder simply was swimming with the tide of history") and portray him as a much weaker figure than he actually was ("In a local context, Moses looked like Goliath; in dealings with the federal government, he sometimes came close to David"). They even find excuses for his racism ("Racism has been such a persistent and ubiquitous phenomenon in North America during the past four centuries that no one should be surprised that Moses was a racist"). The anthology contains a few good points here and there, but it's mostly old wine in new bottles.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-02-04 00:00:00 Edward Brandon I finally threw in the towel on this one. I'm a patient man with not much else going on, but to sit there and read the Encyclopedia Britannica of Moses pools and Moses beaches when you're not a resident of "The City" and couldn't care less about aquatic leisure, chlorine, nor sunburns is simply insane. This being said, I did enjoy the essays. Expecting something of a revisionist rebuttal to the Caro book (after visiting only the Queens venue of the three-part exhibit where the only text to be found was way up high on a random wall - a quote/sentence that seemed most misleading if you've read The Power Broker), most of the essays present balanced views and in some cases even unveil negative Moses stuff that Caro overlooked (see especially Martha Biondi's contribution). These are worth the read, but the concluding 170 pages, as my friend Sean would say, should be "used" [for quick, specific reference or research purposes] rather than read.