Rating: 
Summary: One Terrific Book
Review: "Empire" by Mitch Pacelle is the Biography of the Empire State Building ! With some good historical background, the book focuses on the building, the people whose lives are involved with it and the unusual 114-year master lease given to the Helmsely organization by Prudential in 1961.The "cast of characters" includes an unbelievably wealthy Japanese family (who wind up in prison for their activities), "The Donald" Trump who tries to break the master lease, and Leona Helmsley, the fabulously rich wife of the New York real estate magnate (who ultimatley goes to prison herself).This is a real page-turner. After three nights, I finished it and wished it were longer.
Rating: 
Summary: The Petty Stare at the Heights
Review: After September 11, it�s hard to look at the New York skyline without thinking it has lost some of its majesty. After reading Mitchell Pacelle�s Empire, it�s hard to imagine it ever had any.
Skyscrapers may inspire awe, but the real estate moguls Pacelle discusses saw only dollar signs when they gazed upon the Empire State Building. For decades it was the tallest building in the world, erected at the climax of a skyscraper building war which the Depression ended. Pacelle devotes one chapter to its early history, when Al Smith, the �Happy Warrior� who lost the presidency to Hoover, joined financier John Raskob in a plan to build a tower that would look down on the new Chrysler Building. To cap it, and beat Walter Chrysler, they erected a mooring tower for dirigibles.
Dirigibles never moored there. They blew up in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The economy blew up on Wall Street, and throughout the Thirties the Empire State was a limestone monument to grand dreams and vanished money. Still, Smith and Raskob look like titans compared to the petty characters Pacelle concentrates on.
A reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Pacelle cuts to the 90�s. By then the Empire State had lost its title as world�s tallest building and much of its appeal as an investment property. A century-long lease held by Harry Helmsley and Lawrence Wien prevented owners from squeezing much profit from it. This did not deter a shady Japanese billionaire named Hideki Yokoi from surreptitiously buying it using a front man and dummy corporations. Yokoi was a collector of glamour properties, at one point dispatching his illegitimate daughter Kiiko Nakahara to buy as many French chateaux as she could find.
At the time the U.S. was sensitive about the Japanizing of American assets, like Rockefeller Center. But the complex transaction left it unclear as to who actually owned the Empire State. Enter a cast of unforgettable characters, such as Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley. Trump. once the wonder boy of New York real estate, wanted the building. It would be the ultimate Trump Tower. Leona Helmsley, later dubbed the �Queen of Mean� for her brassy ways and penny-pinching in the hotel chain she owned with husband Harry, had made an enemy of Trump. When Nakahara and Trump agreed on a deal that promised to boost the building�s market value, Mrs. Helmsley saw it as a scheme to break the iron-clad lease her husband�s company held on the Empire State.
Worse yet, Yokoi, an old man with troubles of his own in Japan (he had lost a legal battle that sent him to jail), decided Nakahara had no authority to contract with Trump. The ensuing lawsuits raised a pile of paper probably equal in height to the building that was their subject.
Pacelle�s account neatly picks out the human story in all that paper: an aged father who feels betrayed by his daughter, an evil queen given to shouting obscenities at underlings, a pretender to the throne who expects every smile to get a front page picture in the Daily News. The legal wrangling boils down to a few, human strands: greed, envy, deception, delusion. Shakespeare could have done a lot with this story. Pacelle is alert to its overtones, but the good reporter in him sticks to facts.
That approach seems exactly right for this entertaining piece of business history about outsize egos battling over an outsize building. With Trump as his joker and Leona Helmsley as his queen, Pacelle is pretty close to a royal flush anyway. But the big chip, the Empire State itself, somehow stands apart from the game Pacelle documents. Once majestic, now tattered; once the tallest building in the word, now shrunk in grandeur; once Al Smith�s Depression dream, now a depressing second-rank office tower � even so, the building continues to exalt the imagination, much more so than the petty if colorful conniving Pacelle ably documents.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent business history
Review: Don't think this book is a PBS-like history of the Empire State Building. It's real purpose is a sexy, Donald Trumpesque review of the transactions that have gone on over this coveted building. The foolishness, the cunning characters, and the overall race to own the building have created a great story for Pacelle to write about. While the book is a bit difficult in that it jumps back and forth in places, the level of knowledge presented is both informative and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: I am an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, and I've been reading articles by Mitch Pacelle for some time. Some of the most interesting articles have been about the Empire State Building. For me, the older story revolving around the origins of the building and the skyscraper wars is as interesting as the cut-throat battle between the big guys in real estate such as Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley and Peter Malkin. This book will not disappoint any serious nonfiction reader with the highest standards. I found the legal battles particularly engrossing as well as the relationship between the odd Renoir and the bizarre Yokoi.
Rating:
Summary: Better Than You Expect
Review: I am not going to give away the details of this book, but it is a rivetting book (suprisingly). I had very low expectations when I bought this book.I like books about New York City. It is always on such a grand scale in Manhattan. But I was pleasantly suprised by this book. This is a very well researched and well written book involving the many parties trying to control the Empire State building. From people in Japan to failed chateaus in France and Trump in the middle. Why was I not suprised that he was trying to get a free ride!!! Good read if you have the interest in the New York scene. Well written like a novel - four stars - runs quickly and smoothly. Recommend buy. Jack in Toronto
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Summary: Tawdry, Tarnished--But The Best
Review: I bought "Empire" with the mistaken idea it would be a history of the building: its conception, construction and history. There is some of that but the main thrust is the Art of the Deal: the chicanery, foolishness, cleverness and mind boggling intrigue of the fools, visionaries, and rascals who see the ownership of the Empire State Building as the jewel in their crown, the Nirvana of a real estate deal. The Grand Old Lady is a bit worse for wear, only second tier desirability office rental space, lacking in security and a tad rat infested, but like a true Cleopatra, drives men mad with desire to own her. Investigative journalist, Mitchell Pacelle, does a fine job unraveling the bizarre cast of characters who have tried to nail down ownership, particularly in the last dozen years. Hideki Yokoi, an elderly disgraced Japanese billionaire designated his illegitimate daughter Kiiko to be his emissary and agent in the huge purchase. Kiiko is either a dragon lady or a submissive flower of a daughter and wife to the mysterious James Bondian Jean-Paul Renoir, who is a great businessman, crook, or fall guy; take your pick. You could never make fictional characters out of these people; no one would believe you. On the American front was real estate titan Lawrence Wien, who had a sweetheart 114-year lease on the building. I treasured Mr. Wien because, though very rich, he seemed---well, normal. Partners with Mr. Wien were Harry and the dreaded Leona Helmsley. Multiply everything by ten you have read regarding the Queen of Mean, and you have Leona as she appears in this book. Last but certainly not least, is Donald Trump, the one and only. Donald, who never had one thin dime of his own money invested in the takeover caused merry havoc for over ten years. I had to admire him for two reasons 1) he loathes Leona and never let an opportunity pass to rile and discomfit her, and 2) he structured such a deal, he might have ended up kingpin without a particle of risk on his part. Mr. Pacelle does an excellent job of taking us through this maze of perfidity, and illustrates very well the spell cast by the wooing and winning the Empire State Building. Well researched and a good read. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Better than the pulpiest fiction
Review: In typical New York fashion, the story of the Empire State Building, from inception to today is stranger than fiction. In his brilliant book, "Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon", Mitchell Pacelle reveals the intrigues, wheeling-dealing, and financial brawling that surrounds the greatest symbol of America's financial power. Sometimes the depths to which the players sank were as deep as the Empire State Building is high. There are many of the names that you would expect to be involved in this tale: Raskob, Smith, Helmsley, Trump, but there are plenty of surprises (which I won't give away). Mr. Pacelle deserves a load of credit, not just for the research (which is impressive enough) but for the glitzy, brash, and engaging style with which he tells this fascinating story. Only in New York would a story like this happen, and only Mr. Pacelle has told it the way it should. Rocco Dormarunno, author of THE FIVE POINTS
Rating:
Summary: Better than the pulpiest fiction
Review: In typical New York fashion, the story of the Empire State Building, from inception to today is stranger than fiction. In his brilliant book, "Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon", Mitchell Pacelle reveals the intrigues, wheeling-dealing, and financial brawling that surrounds the greatest symbol of America's financial power. Sometimes the depths to which the players sank were as deep as the Empire State Building is high. There are many of the names that you would expect to be involved in this tale: Raskob, Smith, Helmsley, Trump, but there are plenty of surprises (which I won't give away). Mr. Pacelle deserves a load of credit, not just for the research (which is impressive enough) but for the glitzy, brash, and engaging style with which he tells this fascinating story. Only in New York would a story like this happen, and only Mr. Pacelle has told it the way it should. Rocco Dormarunno, author of THE FIVE POINTS
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read!
Review: Pulitzer Prize-nominated Wall Street Journal journalist Mitchell Pacelle has written an absorbing tale that rivals any novel of business melodrama. If there's anyone left out there who thinks that real estate deals are dry, number-crunching exercises in dullness, this behind-the-scenes look at the extreme personalities vying for control of the Empire State Building will set that myth aside once and for all. We from getAbstract recommend this expertly written page-turner to all readers.
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Summary: Truth is Stranger than Fiction
Review: Similar to the way the untimely deaths of Elvis and Marilyn helped elevate their status from celebrity to icon, the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of September 11 seems well on its way to attaining an iconographic stature it never had while it stood. Take a walk through mid-town this holiday season and survey the street-vendors' wares. Twin Tower memorabilia predominates in a way it hasn`t in the past, most notably in souvenir photographs of New York's skyline. Yet those towers, the tallest of the Manhattan skyline (and briefly the tallest in the world), never defined the skyline in the hearts and minds of New Yorkers (or the worldwide community) in the way the Empire State Building has over the past seventy years. The warmth of the Empire State Building's limestone facade, the grace of its tapered silhouette, the romance of its history (both real and imagined) combine to create an allure that the boxy glass and steel towers could not match. That history is presented in "Empire, A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon," Mitchell Pacelle's biography of the world's most famous skyscraper, and the book skillfully delivers all that its long title promises. The framework is the decade-long battle waged in the Nineties for ownership and control of the building, but there are ample asides that chronicle its entire history. The cast of players include unscrupulous Japanese billionaire Hideki Yokoi, double-crossed by his daughter and son-in-law, Kiiko Nakahara and Jean-Paul Renoir, who claimed Yokoi gave Nakahara the building as a gift; real estate magnate Harry Helmsley and his partner Lawrence Wein and their heirs, Peter Malkin and the reviled Leona Helmsley, who hold a 114 year lease on the property; and Donald Trump, determined to break that lease. This is a big story about a big building, a big family, big fortunes, big egos and big deals. There are occasions when the details of the deals become confusing (like a set of nesting Russian dolls there are holding companies within holding companies within still more holding companies), but by and large the book is a page turner. "Empire" reads like fiction, except that if it were fiction you'd probably never believe it. The Leona parts are a particularly sinful pleasure, but read it without guilt. This is a well-researched and documented account by a respected reporter of The Wall Street Journal.
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