Working for the People: Promise and Performance in Public Service

x, 283 pp. Foreword by Herbert Bayard Swope, section of black-and-white photographic plates in first chapter. A rather self-congratulatory memoir by the famous urban planner of his time in public works. Moses was the subject of Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize winning biography The Power Broker. From the jacket: "Here is a self-portrait of one of the most striking figures on the American scene. Through his many functions in the public service, Robert Moses has changed the face of New York perhaps more than any other man. But although he is intimately identified with New York City and state, he has served widely on the national scene as well. For almost half a century his hand has been found in many of the nation's most vital and imaginative programs for housing and slum clearance, highway construction, power development, city planning, expansion and beautification of parks... 'We face emergencies in this country other than those forced on us by the cold war and atom bombs,' says the author in his Preface. 'These are domestic emergencies arising from the new and expanded tasks of government. They can be met only by finding, training and encouraging the right kind of people to carry on public administrative work; but first we must have a better understanding of how government in a democracy functions and what must be done to shake off illusions and get down to realities. If this purpose is in any measure served by the record of what I have written, said or done, I shall be well satisified.'"