Review by Booklist Review
The author, whose middling-size Silverstein Properties won a bid in the 1980s to lease and develop the last undeveloped parcel at the World Trade Center (Building 7), relates how his company somehow went on to secure a 99-year lease of the main WTC site, including the Twin Towers, for $3.2 billion. The deal was signed on July 24, 2001. Mere weeks later, the day after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that destroyed all seven buildings at the site, Silverstein found himself on the phone with New York Governor George Pataki, discussing how to rebuild. Silverstein, now 93 years old, relates with clarity and concision the decades-long odyssey that led his company through a perilous tangle of insurers, opportunistic local and state politicians, demanding investors, layers of lawyers, the press, and, most painfully, the families of those lost on 9/11 who had yet to find closure at Ground Zero. The result is a surprising page-turner and a rare look at how the levers of power operate at the highest strata of commerce and government.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this feisty debut memoir, Silverstein, the New York real estate developer who signed a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center two months before it was attacked on September 11, recaps his efforts to build new skyscrapers on the site. He recounts successfully lobbying Congress for legislation protecting him against wrongful-death lawsuits; suing insurance companies that initially refused to pay out the billions of dollars covered by his policies, which he augmented by claiming the two plane crashes counted as separate incidents; and tussling with architect Daniel Libeskind over the Freedom Tower's design. Silverstein's account never lacks for melodrama, as when he recalls feeling "like a jilted lover" after the Salomon Brothers investment bank backed out of a World Trade Center lease for a glitzier building uptown. Offering a spirited rebuttal to critics who accused him of overcommercializing the reboot out of mercenary motives, Silverstein insists his goal was to show "the terrorists that they had not won," even as he elsewhere makes clear that the project required obsessive calculation of costs and profit ("As someone who had actually put up commercial office towers, I knew you had to pay a great deal of attention to feasibility"). Though Silverstein's detractors will find much to dispute, this classic New York saga about the symbiosis of grand civic ambition and rugged pragmatism stands tall. Photos. Agent: Eric Lupfer, UTA. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
One of the nation's most successful real estate magnates details what it took to rebuild and revitalize the 9/11 site. As he recounts, Silverstein had secured a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers less than two months before 9/11. In this first-person account of his business success and navigation of the bureaucratic maze known as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the author explains how he used his knowledge, authority, and acumen to follow through on his nearly instantaneous decision to rebuild and revitalize the site and properly memorialize those murdered in the atrocity. In addition to amply demonstrating his entrepreneurial and political adroitness, Silverstein displays a talent for making the complex and high-stakes game of New York City commercial real estate--and the associated legal and insurance wrangling that 9/11 made even more difficult--surprisingly interesting. His seemingly good and decent nature shines through his prose, as does considerable wisdom gleaned from a wildly successful career that many times looked as if it would plunge beyond the precipice--but was bolstered by loyal friends, associates, and, most of all, his devoted and tough-as-nails wife, Klara. Silverstein's poignant and heartfelt description of what was lost--and what endured--in the wake of 9/11, including the anguished resolve to keep moving forward and weighing whether to rebuild or consecrate the entire site as hallowed ground, will resonate with anyone who experienced that tumultuous period. "The precise details are buried deep in my mind," he writes. "Even decades later they are apparently too painful to relive fully." At the same time, the author provides a deeper perspective and understanding to younger readers who did not experience it. Throughout, Silverstein writes with panache, wit, and grace, and his is a story worth savoring. A compelling personal account of a uniquely American comeback. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
