Ben Weinstein’s Reviews > The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York > Status Update

Ch 12: Moses completes transformation from idealist; gets naughty with Boss Doughty in Nassau County; gives King Macy the run-around in court. Al Smith testifies on his behalf (publicly and privately).

220: "He knew that actually the million would pay for only a fraction—a small fraction—of the program. But he had learned how to get things done. With the million, he drove a lot of stakes."

To Jones Beach we go...

201: "'People on Long Island are afraid to go to bed for fear that when they wake up in the morning they would find their property seized by Robert Moses,' [a] Republican senator shouted. Jumping out of his seat, a Democrat replied: 'Is it not true that if they don't go to bed on Long Island it is because the bedsheets may be in use elsewhere?'"

There's a great Jimmy Walker quote as well, but not fit for goodreads.

done with Part III. Moses turns toward parks and away from reform; historo-politico-geographic survey of Long Island; Caro's disdain for robber barons.

p 148: "Their creed was summed up in two quotes: Commodore Vanderbilt's 'Law? What do I care for law? Hain't I got the power?' and J. P. Morgan's 'I owe the public nothing.'" (from a great paragraph I wish I could quote in its entirety—400 characters is too short!)

117: 'Men who saw in the bond between Robert Moses and Alfred Emanuel Smith a key to the shape in which the future of New York State and New York City unfolded... would wonder what had forged between the two men of independence and pride and ambition a tie so strong that, transcending independence and pride and ambition, it would be ended only by death.'

Ch 7 is such a great bio/hagiography of Al Smith

p 41: 'In literature his greatest enthusiasm was for Samuel Johnson. ... The assigned reading included excerpts from Boswell's biography of Johnson; Moses read the book complete'

A man after my own heart.