"Revisionist history reached its apotheosis with a 2007 essay collection.
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"Revisionist history reached its apotheosis with a 2007 essay collection. By that point, New York’s happy fortunes posed another question: If Moses was so uniquely bad, then why had the city fared so much better than its peers? The Power Broker was released the year before the New York City fiscal crisis, with the Bronx fast becoming the national example of urban crisis. Its subtitle captures the grim mood of the era.
But New York didn’t fall. Unlike Newark, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago, New York has more residents now than it did at midcentury."
Read Another Book
The Power Broker leaves us ill-equipped to understand or confront the struggles that face the city today.
Slate Magazine (slate.com)
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
Re the above, I would argue that if you read The Power Broker as either a story about NYC or about Robert Moses, you are reading it wrong. It's not a book about either of those things. It's a book about power -- or more specifically, what power does to the people who wield it.
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@jalefkowit Does “Slate pitch” still mean overdone contrarianism?
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@sjuvonen They do have a standard to maintain over there, for sure
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@jalefkowit Did the author get this book mixed up with “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”?
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@flyingsaceur It mentions Jacobs in passing, but I get the sense this article started with an editor telling Grabar "hey, the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Power Broker is coming up, we should have a piece about that" and then the argument being constructed to fit the news peg