House Of Outrageous Fortune

AmericaâÈçs foremost chronicler of the .01 % and bestselling author of 740 Park reveals the social drama and absorbing business saga of ManhattanâÈçs record-setting address.Michael GrossâÈçs 740 Park captured the private world of old-money New York. Now, picking up the mantle of the late Dominick Dunne in an engrossing synthesis of business epic, social comedy, and gimlet-eyed exposé, Gross takes us inside the nouveau-riche world of the southwest rim of Central ParkâÈ'ground zero for the rise of todayâÈçs cash crop of world figures, including Denzel Washington, Alex Rodriquez, NASCARâÈçs Jeff Gordon, and Sting, hedge fund runners, Russian oligarchs, and the heads of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Google, and Yahoo!, who live larger than anyone in history. They are the men and women who are redefining what it means to be rich right now. Granted unprecedented access to the Zeckendorfs, New YorkâÈçs premier real estate dynasty, Gross offers a penetrating look at their billion-dollar development and into the mindset of its residents, todayâÈçs upper-crust. With its two concierge-staffed lobbies, walnut-lined library, screening room, sixty-seat dining room with a private chef offering room service, and subterranean health club, Fifteen Central Park West emerges as a character in itselfâÈ'a towering Olympus for plutocrats whose power and excess stand as emblems of our age of extreme inequality. Mixing glorious achievement, dubious power plays, and sordid decadence in a crackling good narrative, House of Outrageous Fortune is a jaw-dropping tour of a world most can barely imagine. âÈêHouse of Outrageous Fortune pulls back the limestone curtain of 15 Central Park West to reveal seismic shifts in New York society and the astonishing lifestyle-without-limits of the new global elite. ItâÈçs a dishyâÈ'but not trashyâÈ'page-turnerâÈë (Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group and star of ABCâÈçs âÈêShark TankâÈë).