Free Download | Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon | Mitchell Pacelle

Each day over 4,000 people take the elevator up to the observatory of the Empire State Building to catch a minute of glory. What almost none of them have known--until now--is just how many people have fought to own outright the crown jewel beneath them, and the chaos that these trophy hunters have caused. "Over the years," writes Wall Street Journal reporter Mitchell Pacelle, "the Empire State Building had exerted an almost magnetic pull over a certain kind of man, the kind who once had nothing and now had everything." The construction of the Empire State Building was a $50 million roll of the dice by a failed political candidate, who took on the impossible task of filling 80 floors with paying tenants in the midst of the Depression just to win the race for skyline supremacy. Thirty years later, the Prudential Company gutted the building's profit potential by leasing it to real estate magnates Larry Wien and Harry Helmsley for 114 years. Their heirs, Peter Milkin and Leona Helmsley, would end up locked in a bitter embrace. Then, in 1991, Prudential decided to sell the tower, and the building entered its most bizarre period as a group of eccentric billionaires fought to control it.