Ben Weinstein’s Reviews > City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York > Status Update
Ben Weinstein
is on page 250 of 522
244: "Roosevelt and La Guardia did possess outstanding personal qualities. But this does not fully account for how they came to loom so large in the public life of the nation and the city. ...Roosevelt and La Guardia acquired charisma because events rendered them capable of accomplishing governmental feats that seemed beyond the ability of ordinary mortals."
— Nov 27, 2025 11:16AM
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Ben’s Previous Updates
Ben Weinstein
is on page 349 of 522
346: "In advance of the Jewish high holidays in 1943, [Department of Markets] workers created an exhibition in the Essex Street municipal market to demonstrate to Lower East Side housewives how less expensive saltwater fish could be used in place of the usual freshwater yellow pike and carp to prepare gefilte fish."
— Nov 30, 2025 09:56AM
Ben Weinstein
is on page 215 of 522
201: "Roosevelt had initially conceived [of the Federal One projects] simply as a way to create jobs for a set of particularly hard-hit occupational groups: artists 'have to live,' he remarked; 'I guess the only thing they can do is paint and surely there must be some public place where paintings are wanted.'"
— Nov 25, 2025 08:56AM
Ben Weinstein
is on page 125 of 522
125: "Too often life in New York is merely a squalid succession of days," [La Guardia] said in one campaign speech, "whereas in fact it can be a great, living, thrilling adventure."
Didn't know this was what Eric Adams was riffing on when he said this: https://youtu.be/wSq9SJzSRUA?si=vVatz...
— Nov 19, 2025 10:13AM
Didn't know this was what Eric Adams was riffing on when he said this: https://youtu.be/wSq9SJzSRUA?si=vVatz...
