具体描述
Book Description
In this hugely appealing book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, acclaimed author and journalist Daniel Okrent weaves together themes of money, politics, art, architecture, business, and society to tell the story of the majestic suite of buildings that came to dominate the heart of midtown Manhattan and with it, for a time, the heart of the world. At the center of Okrent’s riveting story are four remarkable individuals—tycoon John D. Rockefeller, his ambitious son Nelson Rockefeller, real estate genius John R. Todd, and visionary skyscraper architect Raymond Hood. In the tradition of David McCullough’s The Great Bridge, Ron Chernow’s Titan, and Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, Great Fortune is a stunning tribute to an American landmark that captures the heart and spirit of New York at its apotheosis.
Amazon.com
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
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.
From Booklist
Rockefeller Center, a complex of buildings in Manhattan built over an eight- to ten-year period the during Great Depression, was the result of a philanthropic gesture by John D. Rockefeller Jr. that took on a life of its own. It took a coterie of legal firms, bankers, architects, and real estate moguls, not to mention thousands of laborers, to create the most ambitious construction project since the pyramids. The scale was unprecedented for its time: 154,000 tons of structural steel; 1,000,000 square feet of window glass; 200 miles of brass pipe; and so on, with 42 elevators in five separate banks necessary to carry its occupants on their appointed rounds. With more office space than the much taller Empire State Building, this architectural marvel was produced to make optimal use of light and air flow before the advent of fluorescent lighting and air-conditioning. The individual characters and their stories form the backbone of this feat, including the famous episode of the controversial Diego Rivera wall mural that was never seen by the public.
David Siegfried
About Author
Daniel Okrent is a prizewinning journalist, author, and television commentator. For many years he was a senior editorial executive at Time Inc. In 2003 he was appointed the first Public Editor of the New York Times.
Book Dimension:
length: (cm)23.5 width:(cm) 16
作者简介
目录信息
读后感
用户评价
关于《机械之心与锈蚀之歌》，我的第一反应是“太有创意了”。这根本不是一本小说，它更像是一本精心制作的、充满蒸汽朋克美学的艺术品。故事设定在一个被巨大齿轮和永不停歇的工厂烟囱笼罩的反乌托邦都市，但它的核心却异常柔软和人性化。那个渴望拥有真正情感的仿生人“零号”，他的挣扎和对“活着”的定义，比许多真正拥有血肉的人类角色更令人动容。我特别着迷于作者如何将复杂的机械结构与抽象的情感概念进行类比，比如“情感过载导致系统崩溃”、“记忆碎片如同磨损的轴承”。文字风格充满了机械的精准感，但又不失诗意的韵律，读起来有一种奇特的快感，仿佛能听到金属摩擦发出的美妙声响。这部作品成功地探讨了“什么是灵魂”这一宏大命题，而且是以一种非常新鲜、充满视觉冲击力的方式呈现的。读完后，我盯着家里的电风扇看了很久，开始思考它是否也有自己的“心跳”。
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评分非常精彩 作者的幽默感又对我胃口 不过作为地铁读物足足看了半个月哈哈! 三教九流各显身手 洛克菲勒家族的性格也都很有趣 岁月的推进 时代的变迁 延续至今的活力 无不让楼群与故事同等迷人 洛克菲勒中心实则已成为通勤日常近水楼台 一定要抽时间去体验观景台冰场餐厅与节日演出的魅力!
评分非常精彩 作者的幽默感又对我胃口 不过作为地铁读物足足看了半个月哈哈! 三教九流各显身手 洛克菲勒家族的性格也都很有趣 岁月的推进 时代的变迁 延续至今的活力 无不让楼群与故事同等迷人 洛克菲勒中心实则已成为通勤日常近水楼台 一定要抽时间去体验观景台冰场餐厅与节日演出的魅力!
评分非常精彩 作者的幽默感又对我胃口 不过作为地铁读物足足看了半个月哈哈! 三教九流各显身手 洛克菲勒家族的性格也都很有趣 岁月的推进 时代的变迁 延续至今的活力 无不让楼群与故事同等迷人 洛克菲勒中心实则已成为通勤日常近水楼台 一定要抽时间去体验观景台冰场餐厅与节日演出的魅力!
评分非常精彩 作者的幽默感又对我胃口 不过作为地铁读物足足看了半个月哈哈! 三教九流各显身手 洛克菲勒家族的性格也都很有趣 岁月的推进 时代的变迁 延续至今的活力 无不让楼群与故事同等迷人 洛克菲勒中心实则已成为通勤日常近水楼台 一定要抽时间去体验观景台冰场餐厅与节日演出的魅力!
评分非常精彩 作者的幽默感又对我胃口 不过作为地铁读物足足看了半个月哈哈! 三教九流各显身手 洛克菲勒家族的性格也都很有趣 岁月的推进 时代的变迁 延续至今的活力 无不让楼群与故事同等迷人 洛克菲勒中心实则已成为通勤日常近水楼台 一定要抽时间去体验观景台冰场餐厅与节日演出的魅力!
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