The Power Broker: Chapter 18 Rules!

After many pages of politics and politcal strategy-- mainly centered around NY Governor Al Smith vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1928 Democratic primary-- Robert Caro's The Power Broker offers up something slightly different: "Chapter 18: New York City Before Robert Moses" and if you like Depression-era anecdotes, urban decay, Tammany Hall Corruption, and grand plans for improvement, then you will love this chapter- in fact, it's a set piece, and if you have access to a copy of this intimidating tome and you don't feel like reading the whole book, turn to this chapter and enjoy the disaster: half-completed skyscrapers; breadlines; tired and hungry school children; a corrupt and paralyzed city government; a vice-squad involved in racism, bribery, and graft; laid off teachers and other city employees; absolutely disgusting, dangerous, and despicable "parks"; politicians privately using public land for parties, housing, and financial gain; rotting unpaved narrow bridges and roads; extraordinary traffic; playgrounds unfit for children; Central Park full of dung and stumps and weeds and mud; a lavish city casino at the edge of Central Park where the elite and the mayor could frolic while the rest of the citizens starved; and a man with a plan . . . an ambitious, populist plan to link the citizens of the city to refurbished parks, to better roads, to New England and New Jersey . . . a monumental plan to preserve the last open natural spaces of the city and to make them available to the people . . . or particular people: people rich enough to own a car, the middle class, those people who had enough money to burn some fuel.