Publishing House: Currency / Crown Publishing
A fly-on-the-wall account of the ferocious ambition, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world: the new Manhattan megatowers known as Billionaires’ Row.
To look south and skyward from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global wealth: a series of soaring spires stretching from Park Avenue to Broadway. Known as Billionaires’ Row, this set of slender high-rise residences has transformed the skyline of New York City, thanks to developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and foreign oligarchs. And chances are most of us will never be invited to step inside.
Billionaires’ Row reveals the captivating story of how, in just a few years, the ruthless real-estate impresarios behind these “supertalls” lining 57th Street turned what was once a run-down strip of Midtown into the most exclusive street on Earth, as legendary Trump-era veterans went toe-to-toe with hungry upstart developers in an ego-fueled “race to the sky.” Based on astonishing access to real estate’s power players, this account brings readers inside one of the world’s most cutthroat industries, showing how a combination of ferocious ambition and relentless salesmanship has created a new market of $100 million apartments for the world’s one-percenters—units to live in or, sometimes, just places to stash their cash.
Filled with eye-popping stories that bring the new era of extreme wealth inequality into vivid relief, Billionaires’ Row is a juicy, gimlet-eyed account of the genius, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world—a stranger-than-fiction saga of broken partnerships, broken marriages, lawsuits, and, for a few, fleeting triumph.
Advance Praise for Billionaires’ Row
“Katherine Clarke knows the world of real estate down to the ground—indeed, down to the bedrock! But she carries that knowledge lightly as she describes the swashbuckling egos, the daredevil deals, and the tsunami of wealth that are imposing skyline-shaping changes in one of the world’s most iconic cities. Billionaires’ Row is deeply informative, delightfully entertaining, and addictively readable. I loved it!”—Diana B. Henriques, New York Times bestselling author of The Wizard of Lies and A First-Class Catastrophe
“An immersive crash course in high-end real estate, Kathy Clarke’s Billionaires’ Row turns the latest New York City skyscrapers—known as super-talls—into symbols of the unchecked ambitions, egomania, and greed of both those who build them and those who can afford to live above it all. To rewrite Oscar Wilde, Even up as high as the stars, you’re barely out of the gutter.”—Michael Gross, New York Times bestselling author of 740 Park and House of Outrageous Fortune
“Katherine Clarke knows the world of real estate down to the ground—indeed, down to the bedrock! But she carries that knowledge lightly as she describes the swashbuckling egos, the daredevil deals, and the tsunami of wealth that are imposing skyline-shaping changes in one of the world’s most iconic cities. Billionaires’ Row is deeply informative, delightfully entertaining, and addictively readable. I loved it!”—Diana B. Henriques, New York Times bestselling author of The Wizard of Lies and A First-Class Catastrophe
“Billionaires’ Row lifts the curtain on the opaque world of ultra-luxury real estate and New York's new generation of supertall skyscrapers. As entertaining as it is educational, this book offers a captivating portrait of the powerful mix of ego, money and competition that—a century after the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings—continues to transform the city's skyline.”—Kate Ascher, professor of urban development, Columbia University; author of The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper
“Billionaires’ Row takes the reader on an in-depth journey into the machinations that built the Manhattan skyline and the colorful characters whose ego and daring has redefined twenty-first century New York. In her deeply researched account, Katherine Clarke expertly traces several key developers as they—through cajoling, manipulation, and lavish spending—meticulously amass large swaths of Midtown to construct towers that have come to symbolize unprecedented feats of human engineering, as well as the hubris and chutzpah of real estate men. Part investigation, part biography, this book is a study of how wealth and ambition trumps all when it comes to the Big Apple.”—Julie Satow, author of The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel
“Billionaires’ Row is a necessary book about how not to build a city. Katherine Clarke has the rare ability to make you understand both the personalities and the numbers behind our modern Towers of Babel along 57th Street; the result is a coolly devastating portrait of the game of greed and ego that has permanently scarred the skyline—and the psyche—of New York.”—Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New York, New York
“Kathy Clarke has aced the luxury real estate beat at the Wall Street Journal with stories that pry open the lives of the rich and powerful. In Billionaires’ Row, she has accomplished a far greater feat with a deeply reported, remarkable tale of the financial bubble that remade the New York skyline. She chronicles a race to the sky among ego-rich developers, one that resulted in a street of super-luxury slim towers, dashed dreams, and meager profits. This book is thrilling, incisive, and a lot of fun to read.”—Eliot Brown, Wall Street Journal bestselling co-author of The Cult of We
