{"product_id":"the-power-broker-pulitzer-prize-winner-robert-a-caro","title":"The Power Broker (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (Robert A. Caro)","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cb\u003ePULITZER PRIZE WINNER   A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One of the Modern Library s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, 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. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree  the way in which politics really happens the way things really get done in America's  City Halls and Statehouses and brings to light a bonanza of vital information  about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the  genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson  Rockefeller.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But\u003ci\u003e The Power Broker\u003c\/i\u003e is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional  portrait of a man an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework  of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient  to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives.  We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our  Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought  for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering  of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches and then ultimately brought down on  the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never  sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of  public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the  accumulation of power became an end in itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Moses built an empire and lived like  an emperor. He was held in fear his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone  who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade  after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing  his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as \"Triborough\" a  government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were  decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses an immense economic  force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and  economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions  of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the  basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated  the politics and politicians of his time without ever having been elected to any  office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Robert Moses held power  in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman,  Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties  of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived  and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars he was undoubtedly America's  greatest builder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This is how he built and dominated New York before, finally,  he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller).  But his work, and his will, had been done.\u003c\/div\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAutorenportrait\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eFor 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Power Broker \u003c\/i\u003eback when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized, and I m sure it helped to shape how I think about politics.  In 2016 he received the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. The London \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e has said that Caro is  The greatest political biographer of our times.   \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCaro s first book, \u003ci\u003eThe Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, \u003c\/i\u003eeverywhere acclaimed as a modern classic, was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. It is, according to David Halberstam,  Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.  And \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003esaid:  In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson,\u003ci\u003e The Path to Power\u003c\/i\u003e, was cited by \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post \u003c\/i\u003eas  proof that we live in a great age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caro s evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson s unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually work, are let it be said flat out at the summit of American historical writing.  Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia University called the second volume, \u003ci\u003eMeans of Ascent\u003c\/i\u003e,  brilliant. No review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.  The London \u003ci\u003eTimes \u003c\/i\u003ehailed volume three, \u003ci\u003eMaster of the Senate\u003c\/i\u003e, as  a masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age.  \u003ci\u003eThe Passage of Power, \u003c\/i\u003evolume four, has been called  Shakespearean . . . A breathtakingly dramatic story [told] with consummate artistry and ardor  (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e) and  as absorbing as a political thriller . . . By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think about, and read, American history  (NPR). On the cover of \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, \u003c\/i\u003ePresident Bill Clinton praised it as  Brilliant . . . Important . . . Remarkable. With this fascinating and meticulous account Robert Caro has once again done America a great service.  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Caro has a unique place among American political biographers,  \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe \u003c\/i\u003esaid . . .  He has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured.  And Nicholas von Hoffman wrote:  Caro has changed the art of political biography. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn and raised in New York City, Caro graduated from Princeton University, was later a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and worked for six years as an investigative reporter for \u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ina, the historian and writer.\u003c\/div\u003e\u003ch4\u003eWeitere Angaben\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eBuch (Paperback), Englisch, 1344 Seiten\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Weltbild.ch: Bücher \u0026 Outlet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66224642621789,"sku":"K081698485","price":27.5,"currency_code":"CHF","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0911\/8915\/0045\/files\/8169848500001A.jpg?v=1792096154","url":"https:\/\/weltbild.ch\/products\/the-power-broker-pulitzer-prize-winner-robert-a-caro","provider":"Weltbild.ch Bücher \u0026 Outlet","version":"1.0","type":"link"}