Modern Library Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century It is the Great American Novel it just happens to all be true.īrothers Judd Top 100 of the 20th Century: Non-Fiction Many people regard it as the best biography ever written-with its interplay of personal, political and universal themes it may actually be the greatest book ever written. The next time an American composer feels the urge to write an opera, this could be the libretto. The story of the getting of that power, of the losing of that power, of the magnificent uses of that power, and of the senseless annihilation of neighborhoods, communities, and ways of life in the exercise of that power, makes for an almost Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Moses spent the rest of his life amassing power. In its place was an understanding that ideas-dreams-were useless without power to transform them into reality. When the curtain rose on the next act of Moses' life, idealism was gone from the stage. Dedicating his life to public service, he remained, during the first years of that service, the idealist of those bull sessions, an idealist possessed, moreover, of a vision of such breadth that he was soon dreaming dreams of public works on a scale that would dwarf any yet built in the cities of America.īut then, as a young reformer in Mayor John Purroy Mitchel's administration, in the mid-1910s, he ran afoul of Tammany Hall and ended up traveling as far as Cleveland just looking for a minor municipal job: standing between it and him was an interceding force, the passionate idealism he had expressed in the Yale bull sessions. The whole life of Robert Moses, in fact, has been a a drama of the interplay of power and personality. In between, while building the New York City and surrounding area that we know today, and defining urban planning in the 20th century:

In private, his conversation dwelt more and more on a single theme-the ingratitude of the public toward great men. On the very last page-1161 pages later-he writes: Oses was always talking-quite movingly, too-about dedicating his life to public service, to helping the lower classes. It has all the drama and scope of a great tragedy and, more than just a biography, it is the story of the failure of liberalism, its corruption by power and its blindness to the manner in which even well-intended government projects have a destructive effect on society. If you've not yet bought your Summer vacation books, allow a strong pitch for this one. I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.

The power broker book