don't think of these books as being about lyndon johnson just like a power broker was not about robert moses. just to tell the life of a famous man from the moment i first thought about doing books i thought of biographies, i thought of biographies as a way of examining the great forces that shaped the times they lived in and particularly political power. why is political power so important? we live in a democracy. we have the power of the votes we cast that ballot boxes and the more we know about political power really works not as it is

i was assigned to read a book, "the power broker," about robert moses. i was so fascinated about the city around me and the ways it grew and changed over the years. that has informed almost every kind of reporting i have done ever since. many different stories i have done over the years are basically about cities. even my reporting in afghanistan was about a city and how it was changing under extraordinary pressure. i wanted to take a city somewhere in the world that exemplified the way that a city grows and changes, the way our urban world is growing and changing, most of the world's populations live in cities now. i wanted to pick one city i could look at as its own world. it is so large an absorbing an interesting that it is like a snow globe. it is a self-contained world where people have these intense experiences in stories that involve each other that are about each other that i wanted to learn. you say hello to them in a place like karachi. an amazing and heart wrenching story comes out of them. i wanted to take one example of the way our urban wo

we are live in belmar, new jersey robert moses, fox news. >>> robert, thank you so much. >>> the fiscals still too much off but the tax hikes and spending cuts already hampering our economy. diane mess is heis here. >> the fiscal cliff may not have hit left but it is already hampering growth in the u.s. economy wiping out nearly 1 million jobs so far this year. the report goes on to forecast if congress fails to avert the cliff 6 million jobs will be lost before 2014 sending the unemployment rate up to 12 percent. part of the problem is the anticipation of the cliff. we are looking at 100 billion automatic cuts to the military and federal agencies and 400 million in tax hikes. it is the largest spurt of deficit reduction in more than 40 years. it is also likely to push the fragile economy into a significant but brief recession. many experts predict the repercussions would be much worse than that. companies are bracing for the expected fallout laying off workers and postponing major purchases. the democrats in government have no consensus on how to deal with it. with business on capitol

robert moses joins us now live in point pleasant new jersey. rt. >> good morning to you. we are sitting in an intersection in pleasant point beach new jersey. there are no lights on. you can see the traffic lights here are still out. the thing that really captures your attention these huge amounts of sand. if we walk over here through the intersection again if you for give me on the other side there's another huge mound back here that is about double my height. huge front-end loaders deposited on the streets here and have pretty much pushed the sand to the side of the street. you can see how the sand has been left in the tracks along the streets here in point pleasant beach, new jersey. this area is unrecognizable. there's a police car at the end of the police car restricting traffic. it is flooded and you have the sand they are trying to clean up. that is the latest from point pleasant beach new jersey. what a sight. back to you. >>> over to you, heather. >> thank you so much. hurricane sandy, the damage has certainly been immense. what will th

wnyw reporter robert moses is live for us in queens new york. lives. >>> ghouled morning to you and good morning to everyone. the suspect lived in an apartment building behind me in queens. he first met with the fbi agent to talk about the plot from july. he wanted the attack to quote shake the whole country. he is identified as a 21-year-old canibangladesh man. he appeared in federal court to answer the serious charges against him. ray kelly is live here in january on a student visa. he thought evidences assembling a 1,000 pound bomb but he was working with an under cover fbi agent who made sure the bomb was harmless and no one was ever in darrening. the federal reserve bank here in new york yesterday and tried to remotely detonate it. after that he was arrested. >> i call it aspirational when you go and pick up 50 20 pound bags of ammonium nitrate. and you obtain a truck and you bring it to the site of a major federal facility and try to detonate it that goes way past aberrationnal to me. >> it includes attempting to use a weapons of mass dest

don't think of these books as being about lyndon johnson just like a power broker was not about robert moses. just to tell the life of a famous man from the moment i first thought about doing books i thought of biographies, i thought of biographies as a way of examining the great forces that shaped the times they lived in and particularly political power. why is political power so important? we live in a democracy. we have the power of the votes we cast that ballot boxes and the more we know about political power really works not as it is taught in textbooks and high school and college but to ignore naked reality of political power the better our votes should be and the better our countries should be and lyndon johnson is the right man to examine political power. he was such a genius in the use of it, to bend washington to his will, the political power produced in the second half of the 20th century is endlessly fascinating, to watch him use it, in this book i just published, "the passage of power," to see him step into the presidency where president kennedy was assassinated with no preparat

these where we find robert moses who is in the middle of flooding and he wants us to give a look will> good morning to you and good morning everybody. this is the forked river, just behind me you can see boats up on stilts. this is east lacy road where i'm standing right now and we artalking about nearly knee i've deepwater. the people who live in this neighborhood say they have never seen the water come up this high. this is an amazing perspective. east lacy road stretches all the way down as far as you can see and around the bend. canoes are the preferred mode of transportation on this road. it is not visible to drive in water this deep. i want to show you how powerful this water really is. as the water came over the banks you can see the debris that it dragged into this neighborhood, leaves and branches, and parts of trees, litter this neighborhood. again, people here say they have never seen anything quite like this. remember, just 14 months ago we saw hurricane irene rip through this area. they say this far surpasses that hurricane. martha, i just want to give you a sense of our

i'm sorry, about robert moses by robert caro and you possibly could read some work, too.you see it is that the local level have a larger impact on things like diversity and access to opportunity and access to employment. >> that is a very important point and i agree with almost everything the mayor just that. also in terms of access to food, access to transportation, downtown holyoke churchville, just by means of us they were doing a public investment, right now we have an $8 million senior center. for example, the decision of where you place an investment in projects can make a huge impact on the people who live in those neighborhoods. we also build our city's first skateboard park. they can even vote, but we invest a quarter of a million dollars and a skateboard park and put it downtown. decisions make a huge difference for people who live downtown. we just a few weeks ago -- we're the process of bringing back our authority to assist her economic development office. to do that we have to have an ambitious urban renewal plan. a few weeks ago we announced a planned that c

that's the latest from point pleasant beach, robert moses. back to you. >> eric: thank you.o much. hurricane sandy leaving behind a path of death and destruction, especially in new york city. take a look at this incredible picture. an entire facade of an apartment building ripped right down during the storm. the debris crashing in front of the mussel maker grill, the restaurant beneath the apartments. ben ross is the franchise development manager for the restaurant and joins us live this. >> no good morning. >> good morning. >> gretchen: that's an amazing picture. looks like a doll house that just stripped the facade right off. what happened? >> it's a tragedy. so no one knows why it happened and exactly what happened yet, but obviously you can tell from the picture the brick facade from the top part where there were apartments fell down to below in front of our restaurant. the restaurant is still completely secure. we just can't get in. >> gretchen: the facade was actually all bricks? >> yeah, it was brick. >> gretchen: because i would that i if it had been plywood or somet

robert moses joining us from long beech. i can see the wind. is it starting to rain there? and good rning to you and everyone . we are just west of long island. governor christied the evacuation of the barrier islands. we are monitoring the guests and ther up to 34 miles per hour. we are just seeing the front edge of the storm. i want to show you when i got here at 4:00, this road was dry. you can now see the water is over topping it. we are just talking before you threw tow me. we'll have to move our live truck. and the water from the ocean is encouraging . as we wade through the water. we are just outside of a restaurant here. just near long beach island and they took precautions by putting sand bags in front of the door. governor chris christie ordered mandatory evacuation in the barrier island casinos in atlantic city. we are seeing the leading edge of the storm and once we see the brunt of the storm, winds will be doubled or so. this is it a storm that means business. we'll get to safety. if you don't have to be out stay inside. we are live in west creek, ocean county,

city's planning and infrastructure development, you should read a book called the power broker by robert moses. yes. i'm sorry. buy rubber roses. by robert. and possibly could also read jay jacobs work as well. and you can see exactly, the local level and they have a larger impact on banks like diversity and access to opportunity and access to employment. >> that is a very important point, and i agree with mostly everything that the marriages said. also, in terms of access to food to maxus of transportation, we have for downtown neighborhoods, holyoke kutcher joe, the flats. this by means of that's a were doing a public investment, $14 million public library in $8 million senior center. for example, just the decision of where you're placing an investment in the projects to make a huge impact on people who live in those neighborhoods. also building our cities first skateboard park that will be done next summer for our cities young people. we are investing a quarter million dollars and a skateboard park and putting it downtown. this is is that does make a huge difference for people who live down