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Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center

Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center

List Price: $15.00
Your Price: $15.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A tribute to the Twin Towers!
Review: I don't think I could ever get over the events of September 11. I lived in Manhattan for a long time, and it seems unbelievable to me that the Twin Towers no longer exist. The Manhattan Skyline is naked.

I bought this book to educate myself on the amount of work that went on to create the world's most impressive towers. The interview with the architectures was quite impressive. This book also explains how the Twin Towers became one of the most lucrative and important assets to the economy. However, I was also looking forward to some illustrations of the towers, which, I'm afraid, there aren't much of those in this book.

These towers and the lives lost in them shall be remembered for a very long time. Purchashing various books on them is like paying a tribute to them.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: VERY DISAPPOINTING
Review: I expected a wonderfully illustrated book with great photography, but was very disappointed when the book arrived. Not only was it dull, the paper quality was poor. The amateurish illustrations were a joke. This is really not something to buy if you want some sort of visual reminder of the Towers or to commerate the horrific events on September 11.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: VERY DISAPPOINTING
Review: I expected a wonderfully illustrated book with great photography, but was very disappointed when the book arrived. Not only was it dull, the paper quality was poor. The amateurish illustrations were a joke. This is really not something to buy if you want some sort of visual reminder of the Towers or to commerate the horrific events on September 11.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A MUST HAVE ITEM FOR YOUR BOOK COLLECTION...
Review: I found Mr Gillespie's Twin Towers very informative, comprehensive and well written. I especially enjoyed reading chapters 2 and 3, especially how he mentions how the Towers were both built from the ground up. I found chapter 4 to be very interesting, if not humorous-you'll find some interesting reading material about how the WTC gained some fame and acceptance, especially about the tight rope walker, the parachute jumper and the rock climber.

Although, the diagrams made great pictorial examples, I believe actual photographs of the inside and outside would have made a great compliment to an excellent and well written piece of work!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Life of NYC's World Trade Center
Review: I picked up this book after the attacks of September 11th to find out more about the buildings that I had often seen in the distance, but had never known much about. I had never been in the World Trade Center, never visited the observation deck, nor eaten at Windows on the World. I found this book very helpful in providing much information about who built it, and how. It also gives a good perspective on what it was like to work in the building.

And it is with that perspective that I recommend this book to others. Not anticipating the sudden and tragic demise of the towers when it was written 1n 1999, the book celebrates the life of the World Trade Center. The last part focuses on the day-to-day lives of the people of the towers and can be especially hard to read after the staggering loss of life on the day the buildings collapsed. I don't think I could read this book right now if the towers were a part of my life before that tragic day. So for the many people for whom the World Trade Center before September 11th was just a recognizable part of the New York skyline, and are interested in learning more about it now that it has so suddenly and completely been destroyed, this is a good book to read. For those whose lives were tied to the buildings in some way, this book may be too close, like a letter from a battlefield soldier that arrives after his or her death.

The book starts out with the background of the organization that planned and built the World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. This is a fascinating story in itself about the growth of a small interstate agency that started its life connecting New York and New Jersey with bridges and tunnels and went on to build the tallest and largest buildings in the area. The author goes on to tell how the Port Authority devised the project, chose an architect, fought all the criticism, and persevered to build the two tallest buildings in the world at that time.

Conceived in the early 1960s, started in 1966, with opening ceremonies in 1973, the World Trade Center was built in a period of great political unrest when many social values were being reexamined. The buildings were subject to a lot of criticism as the values of society were being called into question. The author tells the story of how the architectural world reacted to the towers, but also how the people came to accept the towers as a symbol of New York.

The book is illustrated by seven charcoal drawings by Becky Glyn and by illustrations provided by the Port Authority. Ms. Glyn's drawings are simple and expressive at the same time, but only two are of the World Trade Center towers, and all are reduced to a small 2"x3" format. More illustrative are the stock illustrations the Port Authority provided the author, including the great photo that graces the dust cover. There is a good index and good footnotes. The sources in the footnotes show that there was a lot of research behind the book, including many interviews with the people involved. Many books full of glossy color photos about the World Trade Center will come out after September 11, 2001, but this is the book about the life of New York City's World Trade Center. In that sense, it is a fitting memorial to those who lost their lives in the WTC that tragic day.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very Informative
Review: I really enjoyed reading about the life of the Twin Towers. I just wish there would of been some pictures. It was very interesting about how they built it and how daily life went on in the building, before it was attacked. I now look at ground zero in a different light, from the information read in the book.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: THOUGHT IT WAS A COFFEE TABLE TYPE BOOK
Review: I thought this book would be filled with photos. More of an engineering viewpoint and completely editorial. Probably an interesting read, but I was looking more for a memorial of the towers so as never to forget their majesty.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A good book, but not what I expected
Review: I thought this book would have had more pictures of the construction of the towers and also some pictures of the finished towers. I wanted it as a keepsake since the Towers are now gone. however there are no pictures and only about 7 illustrations. (cross-sectional diagram, map of layout, etc)

It does contain an interesting background to the building of the Towers that is quite an interesting read.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nice cover...
Review: I visited the towers of the WTC in Feb 2000 and was amazed by them (from an engineering perspective) so I went out and bought this book.

While it contains a bunch of interesting and sometimes amusing anecdotes, it is totally uncritical of every aspect of the project: from the architecture (which many New Yorkers and most architecture critics despise because of its arrogant dominance of the varied and otherwise impressive downtown skyline) to the politics behind its construction (which Gillespie presents both as a neutral exercise in town-planning and as 'one man's heroic struggle to realise his dream', neglecting a substantial analysis of the politics of property speculation).

A suprisingly unscholarly work for a professional academic, testament more to the author's evident love of the building than anything else. (The final chapter, "a day in the life", is laughable: a children's story).

I would suggest you take a look at "Divided We Stand", whose blurb looks more promising. Or Mike Davis' "City of Quartz" (about LA), which is phenomenal.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Informative but NO pictures, only some cheap drawings
Review: I was very disapointed. It is very technical writing. If you want a WTC souvenir book with color pictures, don't make the same mistake i did. Wait a few weeks or months. I am sure that somebody is going to write a good rememberance book about the WTC.


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