- Paperback: 528 pages
- Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (Nov 29 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0142001775
- ISBN-13: 978-0142001776
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.3 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 662 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #134,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Those of us who love New York tend to love the city passionately, for its past as well as its present. Daniel Okrent's Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center is a book for New Yorkers from Ashtabula to Zimbabwe: a study of ambition, audacity, and deal-making on a grand scale that led to the construction of some of the most famous skyscrapers in the world. The cast of characters includes not only the many and diverse members of the Rockefeller family, but other powerful New York institutions such as Columbia University, the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modern Art, and The New York Times--not to mention the radical Mexican artist Diego Rivera, the New Yorker cartoonist William Steig, the Marx Brothers, and a bevy of "Rockettes." Okrent's narrative neatly balances the epic and the intimate; he offers both authoritative pronouncements on modern architecture and reams of good gossip. Like New York itself, Great Fortune contains multitudes: densely packed, it remains surprisingly--and welcomingly--commodious. --Tim Page
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Just as Okrent's Nine Innings beautifully telescoped all of baseball into a single game in 1982 between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles, so the former Life editor and Time Inc. executive finds in the creation of Rockefeller Center a good deal of New York and many of the contradictions in American life as the country worked to emerge from the Depression. Built for profit on a run-down stretch of midtown between Fifth and Sixth Avenues called the Upper Estate-myriad lots that underwriter John D. Rockefeller Jr. slowly and inexorably leveraged into an available whole-the seven-year project was second only to the WPA in temporary job creation, though as Okrent shows, the project was far from worker-centered. While one of its originally intended (and abandoned) roles was to provide a new home for the Metropolitan Opera, the sprawling complex came to house a hydra-headed media center anchored by NBC, RKO and RCA, yet saw its gorgeous Center Theatre torn down in 1954 (though Radio City Music Hall and the Rainbow Room remain). But the real stories here come from individual contributions to the huge project, from Junior (and his six children) to hired-artist Georgia O'Keeffe and her apparently abusive photographer-gallerist husband, Alfred Stieglitz; the Roxyettes and the Glee Club singers; engineer O.B. Hanson (inventor of "studio audiences"); and Ray Hood (who ascends from radiator-cover designer to architect of the "Radiator Building"). That the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition began during construction in 1931 as a "modest balsam" decorated by site workers with cranberries, "garlands of paper and... a few tin cans" is just one of thousands of details (including the famous commissioning and destruction of Diego Rivera's murals) that make this magisterial account, itself seven years in the making, fascinating and immediate.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A grand place gets a grand history.,
By
This review is from: Great Fortune (Hardcover)
For most, Rockefeller Center makes its impression on people early in their lives. Many of us as children were introduced to it by either a show at Radio City Music Hall or by a visit to the Christmas tree. Either way, the event was usually magical, and Rockefeller Center always seemed to maintain that Art Deco dreamlike place in our hearts. Finally, this book, "Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center" by Daniel Okrent sort of pulls down the facade to reveal the all too human faces behind this self-contained wonderworld. This story isn't too well-known, and the evolution of the site from midtown wasteland to potential opera house to what it is today is strange enough to pass as fiction. Daniel Okrent does a more than efficient job of balancing all the various elements and characters that went into this place: greed, art, revolution, riches, poverty, Luce, Vanderbilt, Rivera, and, of course, the Rockefellers. There are many more characters and events chronicled here--this isn't light reading! But Okrent makes the ride interesting, balancing dry economics with witty commentary (his own and from others). The pacing is actually very swift, and this is a testimony to Okrent's devotion to his subject and his own writing talents. Pick up a copy of this book; you're sure to enjoy it. Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Great Fortune (Hardcover)
The author does an amazing job of providing insights into the larger than life characters that through a wild concoction of ego, money, and good luck created Rockerfeller Center.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very well done,
By
This review is from: Great Fortune (Hardcover)
Daniel Okrent, public editor of the New York Times, has crafted a terrific history and love letter to New York through the microcosm of the tale of Rockefeller Center, one of the seminal landmarks of the city and one of those true stories that seem stranger than fiction.I can only speak for myself but I imagine that it's hard for anyone who has lived in New York in a time when Rockefeller Center has always existed to appreciate the level of diplomacy, architecture, finance, and artwork that went into creating the complex, not to mention the somewhat scandalous occurrences, but Okrent captures it with a snappy prose style that also manages to blend in some fine observations and humorous analogies. Especially due to the continued presence of the Center, it is gratifying to be able to put into modern context the various descriptions and details and visualize them as they exist today. The history of the Rockefellers, while obviously much broader and filled with much more intriguing information than is relevant here, is nonetheless captured more than adequately, particularly John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his second son Nelson. More than just the account of a building project, the book also marks the transition between old-time New York society of the Gilded Age and the modern New York of the twentieth century. The chapter regarding the controversial Diego Rivera mural seeks to set the record straight on a story that has taken on it's own life over the years and the characters who have previously been given short shrift finally get their due. Perhaps it's fitting that the seminal word on the complex should come from the Gershwins - "They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they're fighting to get in." And we still are. Great book for fans of history, New York, architecture, or just plain good writing.
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