A compelling tale of professional and business responsibility amid the uncertainties of technological innovation.
A fascinating story of how a potential office tower disaster was averted.
Just after the architecturally renowned and structurally innovative Citicorp Center opened in 1977 with its distinctive 59-story office building, the project’s lead structural engineer, William LeMessurier, discovered a heretofore unrecognized problem that increased the odds of a structural failure. A change from welds to bolts for the connection of certain columns, coupled with the realization that a specific wind load had been inadequately considered, required immediate attention. Greenburg, a practicing attorney and author of The Court-Martial of Paul Revere, describes the events that led to this revelation and the highly coordinated efforts that resulted in its quick resolution. Of particular concern was the possibility that a severe storm would cause the office tower to collapse, causing a loss of human life and extensive damage to nearby buildings. Drawing on interviews and documents, Greenburg provides a day-by-day description of the meetings held, the options considered, and the decisions made. He focuses on LeMessurier, who was responsible for the structural design and, with the highly respected structural engineer Leslie Robertson as consultant, led the team that organized the remedial action, interacted with journalists, and liaised with local and state governments, insurance companies, and law firms. For Greenburg, none of this would have happened if LeMessurier had been more diligent in considering the wind loads, more attentive to the change in column connections, and more conscientious about checking on his subordinates’ calculations. The book’s title signals Greenburg’s adversarial stance, and its final sentence accusing LeMessurier of “his willingness to risk all” clearly states the author’s belief that LeMessurier is to blame. The book, though, is better read as a praiseworthy story of how individuals and organizations came together, without rancor, to act responsibly in the face of a potential crisis.
A compelling tale of professional and business responsibility amid the uncertainties of technological innovation.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781479829972
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Washington Mews/New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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