The Power Broker.

CARO, Robert A.

$2,500.00

Item Number: 146799

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

First edition of the author’s Pulitzer-Prize winning work on Robert Moses. Thick octavo, original black cloth, cartographic endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “For Richard from Robert A. Caro.” Also laid in is a signed card from Robert A. Caro from the East Rockaway Library Board and the Cultural Arts Council, dated November 7, 1974. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket, name to the front free endpaper. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. An exceptional example.

One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, the Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today. "Surely the greatest book ever written about a city" (David Halberstam). Theodore H. White called it "A masterpiece of American reporting. It's more than the story of a tragic figure or the exploration of the unknown politics of our time. It's an elegantly written and enthralling work of art."