Product Review

• Wide-ranging, captivating, and deeply introspective, the memoir of William Zeckendorf Jr. (1929-2014) documents the celebrated real estate developer's impact on New York City, Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe
• A glimpse inside the high-stakes world of real estate development, from finding a property to securing financing to hiring an architect to constructing the building to seeing it profitably occupied
• A history of New York in the 1970s and 1980s, from one of the people most responsible for its changing cityscape
• A candid and sincere assessment of the author's successes and failures, his public triumphs and equally public setbacks

In 1986, the New York Times called William Zeckendorf Jr. Manhattan's most active real-estate developer, a judgment borne out by Zeckendorf's fascinating memoir. The second generation of a legendary family of developers, Bill Zeckendorf was a developer with a social conscience, not only putting up buildings but opening neglected parts of the city and transforming whole communities. Among the projects Zeckendorf chronicles in detail - and with rich documentary illustrations - are the Columbia, which set off a building boom on the Upper West Side; the four-acre Worldwide Plaza, a landmark in West Midtown; Queens West, the first residential project on the waterfront in Queens; the enormous Ronald Reagan Office Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.; and numerous projects in Santa Fe, his beloved second home.