An oral history of Britt and Nan Pendergrast, interviewed by their seven children, Jill, John, Nan, Blair, Scott, and Craig

From the author of House of Outrageous Fortune For seventy-five years, it’s been Manhattan’s richest apartment building, and one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the purest luxury, the kind most of us could only imagine, until now. The last great building to go up along New York’s Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then, 740 has been home to an ever-evolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families, some of America’s (and the world’s) oldest money—the kind attached to names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Niarchos, Houghton, and Harkness—and some whose names evoke the excesses of today’s monied elite: Kravis, Koch, Bronfman, Perelman, Steinberg, and Schwarzman. All along, the building has housed titans of industry, political power brokers, international royalty, fabulous scam-artists, and even the lowest scoundrels. The book begins with the tumultuous story of the building’s construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial, artistic, and social cauldron of 1920’s Manhattan, 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929—the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela, the scheming businessman James T. Lee (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s grandfather), and a raft of financiers, many of whom were little more than white-collar crooks and grand-scale hustlers. Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country: the Brewsters, descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony; the socially-registered Bordens, Hoppins, Scovilles, Thornes, and Schermerhorns; and top executives of the Chase Bank, American Express, and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park, these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. Within those walls, they were indulging in all of the Seven Deadly Sins. As the social climate evolved throughout the last century, so did 740 Park: after World War II, the building’s rulers eased their more restrictive policies and began allowing Jews (though not to this day African Americans) to reside within their hallowed walls. Nowadays, it is full to bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in. At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, and how the locus of power and influence has shifted haltingly from old bloodlines to new money. But it’s also much more than that: filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740’s walls, the book gives us an unprecedented access to worlds of wealth, privilege, and extraordinary folly that are usually hidden behind a scrim of money and influence. This is, truly, how the other half—or at least the other one hundredth of one percent—lives.

An honest account of a father's loss and his plea for reconciliation, this book is also a definitive scholarly work on recovered memory therapy and is widely hailed by professional psychologists.

Like A New Sun: An Anthology of Indigenous Mexican Poetry features poetry from Huastecan Nahuatl, Isthmus Zapotec, Mazatec, Tzotzil, Yucatec Maya, and Zoque languages. Co-edited by Isthmus Zapotec poet Víctor Terán and translator David Shook, this groundbreaking anthology introduces six indigenous Mexican poets—three women and three men—each writing in a different language. Well-established names like Juan Gregorio Regino (Mazatec) appear alongside exciting new voices like Mikeas Sánchez (Zoque). Each poet's work is contextualized and introduced by its translator. Forward by Eliot Weinberger. Poets include Víctor Terán (Isthmus Zapotec), Mikeas Sánchez (Zoque), Juan Gregorio Regino (Mazatec), Briceida Cuevas Cob (Yucatec Maya), Juan Hernández (Huastecan Nahuatl), and Ruperta Bautista (Tzotzil).

A history of lucrative real estate in Los Angeles shares the lesser-known contributions of a range of figures from Douglas Fairbanks and Marilyn Monroe to Howard Hughes and Ronald Reagan. By the best-selling author of Rogues' Gallery.

Written and edited by leading international authorities in the field, this book provides an in-depth review of knowledge of tuberculosis of the central nervous system, with emphasis on clinical, diagnostics, and therapeutic features. Tuberculosis, one of the most lethal diseases in human history, still poses a serious threat in the world together with economic and social problems, although a great progress in the fight against this infectious disease in the last century. It covers the full range of tuberculosis of central nervous system and the chapters are organized into six sections: (1) the cranial; (2) the spinal; and (3) the peripheral portions of the nervous system; followed by (4) a section on the laboratory studies in tuberculosis; (5) a section on medical and surgical therapy; and (6) further insights into tuberculosis. This comprehensive reference book will be an ideal source for neurosurgeons, neurologists and specialists upon infectious diseases seeking both basic and more sophisticated information and surgical procedures relating to the complications associated with tuberculosis involving the spine, brain and peripheral nerves.

The book illustrates an unusual example of anti-Semitic behavior in the United States.

“Michael Gross’s new book…packs [in] almost as many stories as there are apartments in the building. The Jackie Collins of real estate likes to map expressions of power, money and ego… Even more crammed with billionaires and their exploits than 740 Park” (Penelope Green, The New York Times). With two concierge-staffed lobbies, a walnut-lined library, a lavish screening room, a private sixty-seat restaurant offering residents room service, a health club complete with a seventy-foot swimming pool, penthouses that cost almost $100 million, and a tenant roster that’s a roll call of business page heroes and villains, Fifteen Central Park West is the most outrageously successful, insanely expensive, titanically tycoon-stuffed real estate development of the twenty-first century. In this “stunning” (CNN) and “deliciously detailed” (Booklist, starred review) New York Times bestseller, journalist Michael Gross turns his gimlet eye on the new-money wonderland that’s sprung up on the southwest rim of Central Park. Mixing an absorbing business epic with hilarious social comedy, Gross “takes another gossip-laden bite out of the upper crust” (Sam Roberts, The New York Times), which includes Denzel Washington, Sting, Norman Lear, top executives, and Russian and Chinese oligarchs, to name a few. And he recounts the legendary building’s inspired genesis, costly construction, and the flashy international lifestyle it has brought to a once benighted and socially déclassé Manhattan neighborhood. More than just an apartment building, 15CPW represents a massive paradigm shift in the lifestyle of New York’s rich and famous—and is a bellwether of the city’s changing social and financial landscape.