Sublime

The abrasive Moses was an exemplary public servant and an empire builder of great virtuosity.

John Gunther was to write about Roosevelt’s “worst quality,” a “deviousness,” a “lack of candor” that “verged on deceit.” Men who had known Roosevelt longer—when he had been Governor of New York—used stronger words; in Albany it had been whispered that a commitment from the Governor could not be trusted; New York City’s ordinarily mild-mannered

When the Senate moved too slowly for Roosevelt’s taste in ratifying a treaty with Santo Domingo to forestall European intervention, Roosevelt, as he himself described it, “put the agreement into effect, and I continued its execution for two years before the Senate acted; and I would have continued it until the end of my term, if necessary, without

Moses built public works costing, in 1968 dollars, twenty-seven billion dollars. In terms of personal conception and completion, no other public official in the history of the United States built public works costing an amount even close to that figure. In those terms, Robert Moses was unquestionably America’s most prolific physical creator. He was

railed as he