A solid and informative exploration of major New York real estate developments.
An insider looks at New York City’s commercial real estate business.
In this business book, Piore profiles the dominant figures in large-scale real estate development in New York in the 1990s and 2000s and the ways in which their projects reshaped the city’s skyline and communities. The construction of Hudson Yards opens the work, which then jumps back in time to review the city’s physical decline in the ’70s and its ’90s renewal before returning the focus to the large developments of the last two decades. In addition to Hudson Yards, the volume examines the construction of commercial and residential spaces at Columbus Circle, the redevelopment of the World Trade Center, and the growth of high-rise condos selling for record-setting prices to international buyers whose identities are concealed by shell corporations. Developers Steve Ross, Harry Macklowe, and Kent Swig are the book’s main characters, with other developers, financiers, and real estate brokers playing smaller roles. The work is filled with juicy quotes and insider gossip, not only about the projects, but about the men’s personal lives as well, with Swig’s and Macklowe’s expensive divorces getting plenty of attention. Some anecdotes appear multiple times throughout the text, like Macklowe’s late-night demolition of a building, adding to the sprawling nature of the narrative. But on the whole, Piore does a good job of keeping the threads of the story clear as he moves from one project to another. The complex financial and regulatory aspects of real estate development are explained in sufficient detail, making the volume appropriate for nonspecialist readers. As the work is focused primarily on major deals and the people involved in them, the sociological implications of the resulting housing shortages and growing economic inequality are only briefly touched on. Still, the author does acknowledge the problems along with celebrating the audacity and success of the long-shot bets that have resulted in multibillion-dollar wins.
A solid and informative exploration of major New York real estate developments.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73794-340-2
Page Count: 380
Publisher: The Real Deal
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
