The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.
First edition, first printing. Signed by Robert A. Caro on the half-title page. Bound in publisher's black cloth lettered in gilt on spine, red topstain, cartographic endpapers. Near Fine with light rubbing to spine gilt and sunning at tail, small bump to upper corner of first 30 pages, and light toning to contents. In a Very Good price-clipped dust jacket with sunning to spine panel and extremities, light soiling and edgewear, and 2 tape repairs to lower edge on verso.
A signed first edition of Caro's exhaustively researched Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the notorious urban planner Robert Moses, who ruled New York with an iron fist and riddled it with expressways. Caro's book finished off the already declining reputation of its subject, and Moses is now remembered by many urbanists as the Satan to Jane Jacob's Archangel Michael.
Price: $2,500