You might consider these selections less as titillating beach reads and more as compelling choices for very smart readers, who possess more than a passing interest in transportation, history and why the Port Authority, for almost a century, has done more to shape the New York Port Region than practically anything else.

While this book club functions differently than say, Oprah’s Book Club, our goals are equally worthy. We aspire to carve a niche of readers who want a deepened understanding of the Port Authority and the New York/New Jersey region.  Oh yes, we’re completely open to suggestions too.

What follows are four scrupulously researched and definitive works with first sentences to whet your reading appetite . . .

Highway Under the Hudson:  A history of the Holland Tunnel by Robert W. Jackson

“The TWO MEN met, at the governor’s request, in the dining hall of the Army and Navy Club on the corner of Connecticut Avenue and I Street NW, in Washington, D.C.  It was the middle of January 1917.”

The Power Broker:  Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

“Robert Moses was born December 18, 1888.  He was not given a middle name because his mother saw no reason for one.”

Crossing Under the Hudson: The Story of the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels by Angus Kress Gillespie

Opening epigraph by Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920:

“As [Newton Archer] paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York.  They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephone communication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.”

Empire on the Hudson:  Entrepreneurial Vision and Political Power at the Port of New York Authority by Jameson W. Doig

Opening to Chapter 12 – Breaking an Airline Monopoly

“By the late 1940s, it was a central principle at the Port Authority that no new project would be undertaken unless it was expected to become financially self-supporting.”