740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building | Michael Gross

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building | Michael Gross | Interseting look at Money in New York - 3.5 Stars

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740 Park: The Stor...

	740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building Michael Gross Broadway, 2006 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great gift...except you'll want to keep it

Gross pulls off a real balancing act here. The back of the book is full of great scandal. I'd call it gossip but it's so obviously well researched, and gives more insight into America's real ruling class--folks like Steve Schwarzman, Henry Kravis, Saul Steinberg and Ronald Perelman--than I've ever read before. But it's the beginning that really makes this book important and a terrifically juicy read, as it mixes real-life lead characters like Jackie O's parents and grandparents (and the future first lady, too) and the Rockefeller and Chrysler families with British aristocrats and fortune hunters, mixing in sidelights like the untold story of the scandlous behavior of the first governor of Oklahoma, Charles Haskell, and how it caused a war with William Randolph Hearst, and reveals in what I think is an unprecedented way the intimate connection between the domestic lives of the ultra wealthy and how the world is really run. Wow.

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Interseting look at Money in New York - 3.5 Stars

This work explores a world and more specifically that the average person can only see from afar. Looking into the life of a building that is essentially a stack of mansions in the best part of New York that housed the most prestigious and powerful is certainly the making of an interesting read. It is the making of a good read but unfortunately not a great one. This book starts out with a really interesting introduction and begins with a great look at high society in New York and where they chose to live during New York's earlier times. It also includes a great look into several very enigmatic New Yorkers and does great justice to Candella's architectural style and how and why he was so great.

The Building is build literally in the brink of the beginning of the depression probably before anyone really new what was to come. This too is rather enjoyable and it is also interesting to see how the apartments get purchased and the way the super elite co-ops worked. But then the book seems to just fizzle out. While the tenants of the building did certainly lead interesting lives reading this part of the book should have been more enjoyable. The entire time it felt like Michael Gross was building the suspense for something great and it was a real let down as nothing great actually came.

All in all I will still recommend this book. It had good points and the first 200 pages were really a great look into old New York. This is a book for those who are fascinated with the rich throughout history and New York history in general. The author's overly journalistic style takes some getting used to but it doesn't ruin this book. I give the a solid 3.5 stars.

Ted Murena

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