"The Five Books of (Robert) Moses," by Arthur Nersesian

This selection is a whopper at 1,510 pages and ~565,750 words! Only Atlas Shrugged might be a longer previous selection of ours. (Consider AS is 63 hours on audio book versus FBoRM's 61 hours.) This novel could be considered something of a follow-up to Robert Caro's The Power Broker, which we read during the Summer of '24. That biography proved incredibly popular among our members, so why not give this NYC-focused alternative history / speculative fiction novel a go? A number of reviewers point out the author's topical prescience regarding conflicts, pandemics, and more, since his book's publication.

Kirkus Reviews describes the story, "Imagine William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick sharing a needle."

As one Goodreads reviewer sums things up: "The author is a master at capturing the essence of NYC and the highly charged political climates of the current times. It would make an excellent flick or mini series. Please someone make this film! I can’t wait to see these characters be brought to life someday."

Sounds like plenty of discussion fodder with this selection!

From Goodreads:

A dramatic, playful, brutal, sweeping, and always entertaining reimagining of New York City history, presaging today’s politics.

After a domestic terrorist unleashes a dirty bomb in Manhattan in 1970, making the borough uninhabitable, FBI agent Uli Sarkisian finds himself in a world that is suddenly unrecognizable as the United States is faced with its greatest immigration crisis ever: finding housing for millions of its own citizens. The federal government hastily retrofits an abandoned military installation in the Nevada desert, vast in size. Despite the government’s best intentions, as the military pulls out of “Rescue City,” the residents are increasingly left to their own devices, and tribal warfare fuses with democracy, forming a frightening evolution of the two-party system: the gangocracy. Years after the Manhattan cleanup was supposed to have been finished, Uli travels through this bizarre new New York City, where he is forced to reckon with his past, while desperately trying to get out alive.

The Five Books of (Robert) Moses alternates between the outrageous present of Rescue City and earlier in the twentieth century, detailing the events leading up to the destruction of Manhattan. We simultaneously follow legendary urban planner Robert Moses through his early years and are introduced to his equally ambitious older brother Paul, a brilliant electrical engineer whose jealousy toward Robert and anger at the devastation caused by the man’s “urban renewal” projects lead to a dire outcome.

Arthur Nersesian’s most important work to date examines the political chaos of today’s world through the lens of the past. Fictional versions of real historical figures populate the pages, from major politicians and downtown drag queens to notorious revolutionaries and obscure poets.