About the Author

Neal Bascomb is a former journalist and book editor. He recently participated in two documentaries on architectural history. A native of St. Louis, he now lives and writes in New York City. For more information about the author, please visit www.nealbascomb.com

Reviews

“Neal Bascomb's Higher is a fascinating account of the bitter race between two 1930's Manhattan architects to build the world's tallest building and thereby set in place a significant part of the fabulous skyline that inspires us to this day. Full of intrigue, insider's detail, and rich characterization, Higher is delicious history with a human face--a must-read primer on how THE city came to be.”—Les Standiford, author of The Last Train to Paradise

“In Higher, Neal Bascomb has captured the very engaging human drama of architects and entrepreneurs scheming and competing to build the tallest skyscraper in New York--and in the world. Their legacies still stand proud, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings being among the greatest artistic and structural engineering achievements of all time.”—Henry Petroski, author of Engineers of Dreams

“Characters and buildings alike come vividly to life in Neal Bascomb's account of ambition, greed and technical ingenuity during the Roaring Twenties. An enthralling tale, brilliantly told, of the greatest architectural adventure of the twentieth century.”—Ross King, author of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling and Brunelleschi's Dome

“The great race to build the world's tallest building still continues in Asia, but nowhere was the gamble undertaken with such intense competition as New York in the twenties and thirties. Out of it came iconic structures that define the city's profile and inspire generations of designers. Neal Bascomb's exploration of the struggle for supremacy among the Chrysler, Empire State, and 40 Wall Street buildings reveals how strong personalities, powerful economic forces, and shifting design aesthetics influenced those who sought to dominate the sky in New York. In his compelling narrative each building comes to a different result, but their interdependence is compellingly documented and convincingly presented. Anyone interested in the three tall buildings that make New York special with want this book.”—Hugh Hardy, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates LLP

The 1920s "race" to build the world's tallest building has been extensively chronicled. A former literary agent and former St. Martin's editor, Bascomb centers his narrative on two architects, William Van Alen and Craig Severance, who schemed to outdo each other in the race to pierce New York City's skies with, respectively, the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building on East 42nd Street-only to be beaten by a third team hired to construct the Empire State Building (at Fifth Avenue and 34th). While this story is most often told as a sentimental paean to "progress" rather than a bitter corporate feud, Bascomb gives his tale a fresh sense of capitalist drama in his evocation of the nascent worlds of skyscraper engineering, architecture and construction-and real estate speculation with returns projected at 10%. He imbues the former three with some terrific detail (including a 22-item list of how many trades, including mail chute installers and asbestos insulators, it took to build a skyscraper) that gives context to the players and incidental characters, including the five Starrett brothers (builders raised in Lawrence, Kans., who built 40 Wall Street), General Motors' financier John Jacob Raskob (the man behind the ESB), Walter Chrysler, New Yorker reviewer "T-Square," former governor Al Smith and many others. The occasionally intrusive clich?s (the Starrett brothers "had building in their blood"), hyperbole (the '20s were "a decade gone mad") and familiar generalizations (the U.S. "finally came into its own" in that same decade) are excusable in a debut book, especially one chronicling an obsession with height and speed. (Oct. 21) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

"Neal Bascomb's Higher is a fascinating account of the bitter race between two 1930's Manhattan architects to build the world's tallest building and thereby set in place a significant part of the fabulous skyline that inspires us to this day. Full of intrigue, insider's detail, and rich characterization, Higher is delicious history with a human face--a must-read primer on how THE city came to be."-Les Standiford, author of The Last Train to Paradise

"In Higher, Neal Bascomb has captured the very engaging human drama of architects and entrepreneurs scheming and competing to build the tallest skyscraper in New York--and in the world. Their legacies still stand proud, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings being among the greatest artistic and structural engineering achievements of all time."-Henry Petroski, author of Engineers of Dreams

"Characters and buildings alike come vividly to life in Neal Bascomb's account of ambition, greed and technical ingenuity during the Roaring Twenties. An enthralling tale, brilliantly told, of the greatest architectural adventure of the twentieth century."-Ross King, author of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling and Brunelleschi's Dome

"The great race to build the world's tallest building still continues in Asia, but nowhere was the gamble undertaken with such intense competition as New York in the twenties and thirties. Out of it came iconic structures that define the city's profile and inspire generations of designers. Neal Bascomb's exploration of the struggle for supremacy among the Chrysler, Empire State, and 40 Wall Street buildings reveals how strong personalities, powerful economic forces, and shifting design aesthetics influenced those who sought to dominate the sky in New York. In his compelling narrative each building comes to a different result, but their interdependence is compellingly documented and convincingly presented. Anyone interested in the three tall buildings that make New York special with want this book."-Hugh Hardy, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates LLP