Funny you should mention Bob Moses -- I just got Caro's book about him a few months ago and read it voraciously. What a fascinating subject! Moses is truly one of the people who permanently changed the city, for better or for worse.

Moses seems to be a perfect case of "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." He brought New York City and its surrounding environs into the automobile age in the first part of the 20th century, for which he should be remembered gratefully. But once the public thought he could do no wrong, and politicians were too scared of him to challenge any of his more harebrained ideas, he was allowed to run amuck. His wanton destruction both of lower middle class neighborhoods throughout the city and his replacing them with those horrible, oppressive housing projects, as well as his deliberate neglect of the entire public transportation system of New York City and State, probably contributed in a big way to the fiscal and social decay of the '60s and '70s.

I think he's a great man in many ways who, if he'd been kept in check, would be much better remembered today.

Just my loudmouthed New York opinion!

Pal Joey