For forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses was the most powerful man in New York. Though never elected to office, he manipulated those who was through a mix of guile, charm, and intimidation.

Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City’s workers, he created new parks, new bridges, and 627 miles of the expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. But in the 1950s, groups of citizens at the grassroots began to organize against his schemes and against the motor car, campaigning for a very different idea of what a city was and for what it should be.