Robert Moses
Efficacy and Democracy
Before 2013 begins, catch up on the best of 2012. From now until the New Year, we will be re-posting some of The New Republic’s most thought-provoking pieces of the year. Enjoy. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of PowerBy Robert A. Caro (Knopf, 712 pp., $35) I. READ MORE >>
The Nostalgia Throwdown, Ctd.
Two days ago, I noted the element of nostalgia for the post-World War II era in President Obama's State of the Union address and its precursor, his much-hyped speech last month in Kansas. In his call for restoring the public investment and middle-class stability of those years, I wrote, Obama seeks to "demonstrate that more broadly shared prosperity, with higher marginal tax rates, is not incompatible with strong economic growth, and is in fact inextricably linked with it. READ MORE >>
The New York Times’ profile of celebrated and embattled New York City Transportation Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, shows how getting things done in a democracy can be bad for your political future. READ MORE >>
But Is Jesse Jackson *Interesting*?
Easy Rider
The Art of the Impossible: Building Megaprojects
What A City Needs
Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City By Anthony Flint (Random House, 256 pp., $27) READ MORE >>
Mormons and Money
Mitt Romney is a Mormon. He is also rich. According to data released by his campaign in August, Romney's net worth is between $190 and $250 million. He earned much of this money at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he started with two partners in 1984. Under Romney's leadership, Bain took advantage of the leveraged buyout craze of the 1980s and '90s to become a wildly profitable corporation. READ MORE >>
American Collapse
Within fourteen days of each other, two rush-hour calamities: a bridge collapse and a steam-pipe explosion. In Minneapolis, a forty-year-old bridge along highway I-35W suddenly dropped sixty feet into the Mississippi River, killing at least five people and injuring approximately one hundred more. The federal government had deemed the bridge structurally deficient in 1990, which the Minnesota Department of Transportation acknowledged in separate reports issued in 2005, 2006, and 2007, after inspecting the bridge. READ MORE >>
Lindsay—The First Six Months
“New York City needs, and must have, a change. It must change completely in all of its institutions from top to bottom.”—CANDIDATE JOHN LINDSAY, a week before his election as mayor. READ MORE >>
