The Power Broker is awesome. One of the finest books for understanding the 20th century. It's also fascinating to note that today we blame car culture on oil companies and selfish consumers. Turns out that the one of the people most responsible for creating America's car dependent culture was a progressive named Robert Moses ( with a lot of help from the NY Times). BTW, another great book on urban themes is City: Urbanism and its End, by Doug Rae.
Also recommended in this reply