The Liar's Ball : The Extraordinary Saga of How One Building Broke the World's Toughest Tycoons (Hardcover)--by Vicky Ward [2014 Edition] ISBN: 9781118295311

Towering and talented, they are rich, powerful, driven dreamers. They are also tortured, vindictive, neurotic. Scathingly successful, these flamboyant real estate tycoons share a voracious desire and joust for a plot of land and its gleaming white fortress, the most expensive office building in America: the General Motors Building. __New York Times__ bestselling author Vicky Ward reveals the high-stakes gamesmanship, risky sleight-of-hand bets, brutal deceptions, foolish betrayals, and broken spirits among the over-reachers and titans. Beginning with Tammany Hall scoundrel William Magear “Boss” Tweed and including Harry Macklowe, Donald J. Trump, William Zeckendorf, Mort Zuckerman, Stephen C. Hilbert, Disque D. Deane, Lord Max Rayne, Cecilia Benattar, and Harry S. Black, their rise-and-fall stories span 150 years. Dream chasing, it turns out, in the world of global real estate is far dirtier than even she—a veteran investigative reporter and the author of a book on Wall Street—could ever have imagined. One as good as killed his wife with cruelty. Another helicoptered five miles to work each day, and married a woman who jumped nearly naked out of a cake. The colorful, indefatigable “housewife tycoon” chief executive brazenly battled New York’s social and business elite. All went to bewildering, extraordinary lengths to pursue their goals. The boorish behavior at The Liar’s Ball, the annual gala that the Real Estate Board of New York throws itself, had intrigued Ward when she attended. It paled in comparison to the roughness she unearthed in over 200 interviews for this book with her crowd of “rough riders” (as the New York real estate dealmakers were once called). And yet tempering the grotesque intemperance was the humanity, the vulnerability that these characters—for the most part—revealed. They are fascinating in their insecurities as much as in their ambitions, and Ward masterfully brings together their intrigues and ironies in a gripping story alive with all the complexities of human nature — a book as compelling and absolutely absorbing as the charismatic leaders of the dance at The Liar’s Ball. Come,join in ... Towering and talented, they are rich, powerful, driven dreamers. They are also tortured, vindictive, neurotic. Scathingly successful, these flamboyant real estate tycoons share a voracious desire and joust for a plot of land and its gleaming white fortress, the most expensive office building in America: the General Motors Building. New York Times bestselling author Vicky Ward reveals the high-stakes gamesmanship, risky sleight-of-hand bets, brutal deceptions, foolish betrayals, and broken spirits among the over-reachers and titans. Beginning with Tammany Hall scoundrel William Magear “Boss” Tweed and including Harry Macklowe, Donald J. Trump, William Zeckendorf, Mort Zuckerman, Stephen C. Hilbert, Disque D. Deane, Lord Max Rayne, Cecilia Benattar, and Harry S. Black, their rise-and-fall stories span 150 years. Dream chasing, it turns out, in the world of global real estate is far dirtier than even she—a veteran investigative reporter and the author of a book on Wall Street—could ever have imagined. One as good as killed his wife with cruelty. Another helicoptered five miles to work each day, and married a woman who jumped nearly naked out of a cake. The colorful, indefatigable “housewife tycoon” chief executive brazenly battled New York’s social and business elite. All went to bewildering, extraordinary lengths to pursue their goals. The boorish behavior at The Liar’s Ball, the annual gala that the Real Estate Board of New York throws itself, had intrigued Ward when she attended. It paled in comparison to the roughness she unearthed in over 200 interviews for this book with her crowd of “rough riders” (as the New York real estate dealmakers were once called). And yet tempering the grotesque intemperance was the humanity, the vulnerability that these characters—for the most part—revealed. They are fascinating in their insecurities as much as in their ambitions, and Ward masterfully brings together their intrigues and ironies in a gripping story alive with all the complexities of human nature — a book as compelling and absolutely absorbing as the charismatic leaders of the dance at The Liar’s Ball. Come, join in ... Inside the world of the real Great Gatsby of New York real estate Harry Macklowe is one of the most notorious wheelers and dealers of the real estate world, and Liar's Ball is the story of the gamblers and thieves who populate his world. Watch as Harry makes the gutsy bid for midtown Manhattan's famous GM building and put almost no money down, landing the billion-dollar transaction that made him the poster child for New York's real estate royalty. Listen in on the secret conversations, back-door deals, and blackmail that put Macklowe and his cronies on top—and set them up for an enormous fall. Vanity Fair contributing editor Vicky Ward skillfully paints the often scandalous picture of the giants who owned the New York skyline until their empires came crumbling down in the 2008 financial crisis. Based on more than 200 interviews with real estate moguls like Donald Trump, William Zeckendorf, Mort Zuckerman, and David Simon, Liar's Ball is the never-before-told story of the egomaniacal elites of New York City. Read about: The epic rise and fall of one of the richest American real estate barons Outlandish greed and cravings for power, attention, and love Relationships built and destroyed by vanity and gossip The bursting of the real estate bubble and its aftermath This is no fiction—this is a real life tale of extravagance, ambition, and power. Harry Macklowe ruthlessly clawed his way to the top with the help of his loyal followers, each grubbing for a piece of the real estate pie. Liar's Ball reveals their secrets and tells the tale of business as usual for this group—lying, backstabbing, and moving in for the kill when things look patchy. From the bestselling author of The Devil's Casino comes an expos??? on the real estate elite that you'll hardly believe. "[This] is about the desperate scramble that ensued when the world's most expensive building went on the auction block. The iconic GM Building in New York brought out the best and the worst in New York's real estate royalty, and led a few of them to ruin ... The Liar's Ball is a story of naked, unregulated capitalism, of the sometimes bloody free-for-all of the free market. It's the tale of brilliant and enormously ambitious billionaires fighting bare-knuckled to get what they want. And they all wanted the GM Building. This will tell a story of how men with outsize dreams and egos connived, with and against another, to buy up land and build on it; of how that outsized ambition quite literally made them the Kings of America, the larger-than-life representatives of the American Dream - and yet while they ruled with money, the irony was they came to crave the one thing their money couldn't acquire: social acceptability with the often penniless American WASPs who could not understand their audacity, their ambition. While the book will go back in time to when men started to build and buy land, it will focus on the family names everyone knows: Trump, Rockefeller, Astor, Durst, LeFrak, Rudin, Rose, Goldman, Macklowe, Speyer, Bass, Simon, Taubman, Chandler (California), Brown (Chicago) Kerkorian (LA) Crocker (San Francisco) Sopher (Miami) Hilbert, Malkin, Zeckendorf, and more. While some had fleets of planes, vast boats and, always the trophy girlfriend or wives, the playboy moguls also became the real brokers of power, who crushed the opposition on Capitol Hill like flies and who often set its agenda, far more than anyone really realized"--Publisher's description The Liar’s Ball 3 Contents 9 Preface 11 Cast of Characters 13 Introduction 17 Chapter 1: Stealing the Spotlight 19 Chapter 2: Alpha Males 29 Chapter 3: The Rigged Bid 39 Chapter 4: Harry’s Hero 55 Chapter 5: The Odd Couple: The English Lord and the Housewife Tycoon 67 Chapter 6: The Age of the Wolf 83 Chapter 7: Donald Trump’s Bag Man 97 Chapter 8: The Money Hunters and the Salesman from Indianapolis 109 Chapter 9: Donald’s “Force Majeure” 121 Chapter 10: Paradise, Briefly 127 Chapter 11: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride 135 Chapter 12: Tick Tock—A Year on the Clock 147 Chapter 13: The Fall That Wasn’t 163 Chapter 14: Aftermath 171 Note about the Sources 175 Acknowledgments 177 Notes 179 Bibliography 249 About the Author 251 Index 253 Supplemental Images 259 EULA 275