Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center [Paperback]

Eric Darton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465017274 | ISBN-13: 978-0465017270 | Publication Date: January 1, 2001

When the World Trade Towers in New York City were erected at the Hudson’s edge, they led the way to a real estate boom that was truly astonishing. Divided We Stand reveals the coming together and eruption of four volatile elements: super-tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism. The Trade Center serves as a potent symbol of the disastrous consequences of undemocratic planning and development.This book is a history of that skyscraping ambition and the impact it had on New York and international life. It is a portrait of a building complex that lives at the convergence point of social and economic realities central not only to New York City but to all industrial cities and suburbs. A meticulously researched historical account based on primary documents, Divided We Stand is a contemporary indictment of the prevailing urban order in the spirit of Jane Jacobs’s mid-century classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Despite its coy and misleading subtitle, this is a mesmerizing history of how deep-seated struggles over architectural aspirations, economics, city planning and the exigencies of a democracy undergird the New York cityscape. Taking the planning and building of the twin towers of the World Trade Center as a point of departure, Darton treats readers to a smoothly written and provocative study of everything from the potentially utopian nature of cities to the role of the automobile in urban redevelopment, and from the aesthetics and politics of constructing tall structures (including the Eiffel Tower) to a history of the contested development of lower Manhattan. While grounded in the theories of such diverse thinkers as Jane Jacobs, Peter Kropotkin, John Ruskin, Marshall Berman, LeCorbusier and Lewis Mumford, Darton's dramatic narrative never loses sight of the strong personalities and (often unscrupulous) political hardball that reshaped Manhattan. Central figures include such power players as master planner Robert Moses ("who by his own description hacked his way through New York with a meat ax") and investment developer David Rockefeller and his brother, Nelson, the governor of New York State (whom Darton casually compares to gangsters). A professor of media, technology and cultural studies at Hunter College, Darton is best when elucidating the economic interests behind urban renewal and the destruction of neighborhoods that has often ensued in more than 40 years of Manhattan redevelopment, culminating in the building of one of New York's iconic landmarks. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Among the most widely recognized of human-made structures, New York City's World Trade Center is both beloved for its photogenic skyline presence and vilified for symbolizing bloated bureaucracy and heartless modernism. These two books comprise initial attempts to flesh out the WTC's history, appraise its place in 20th-century architecture, and judge its success as urban design and economic planning. Neither author is an authority on architecture, city planning, politics, or economics, and both treat the WTC itself as a backdrop to the political maneuvering that made its creation possible. Gillespie (American studies, Rutgers) pens an absorbing account incorporating personal interviews and observations, exuding enthusiasm and empathy. In striking contrast, Darton's (cultural studies, Hunter Coll.) study brims with irony, invective, and irrelevant digressions. Where Gillespie sees the New York Port Authority, the WTC's parent, as a powerful agency struggling to fulfill its mandate to facilitate transport and commerce, Darton sees the undiluted evil of unaccountable government officials in pursuit of ignoble ends. The same events are given diametrically opposed interpretations, and a few facts appear to be in dispute. Gillespie examines the tower's planning and construction in far more depth, but both he and Darton take the same superficial approach as Tom Wolfe in From Bauhaus to Our House. For now, architecture librarians will remain better served by Anthony Robin's The World Trade Center (1987). Large urban planning collections, however, may want to add both Twin Towers and Divided We Stand as a lesson in contrasting interpretation.
-David Solt?sz, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 16 and up
  
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465017274
• ISBN-13: 978-0465017270
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,710,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Divided We Stand" Stands Out, May 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Divided We Stand : A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center (Hardcover)

This book is much more than its title implies. Beyond its focus on the World Trade Center, it descibes the development of Lower Manhattan with an inside look at a naked land grab by the Port Authority under the guise of public interest. Other major players include David and Nelson Rockefeller with the apparent collusion of the New York Times. In addition to a lovely image of the WTC rising through the clouds in the frontispiece, each of the nine chapters opens with a beautiful photograph that illustrates the text. As you navigate this lyrically written exposé, don't miss the witty subheads.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From a Native New Yorker, June 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center (Paperback)

I loved this book. It is a prophetic and daring account of the trade towers written while they were still symbols on our skyline and before anyone but a handful of people cared enough to look at them as something more. This is an incredible book too, because it is the closest we will get to knowing these buildings now, to hearing what they might have told us if they could speak. The author saw the towers as vulnerable and toubled and dangerous, and makes no bones about the violence and greeed written into their building. But above all, his love of New York shines through.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Written at the Right Time, December 16, 2001

By 

Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center (Paperback)

Of course, the twin towers mean many different things and to many different people than they did a year ago when this book first came out. But that, in many ways, is the pleasure of this book. It looks at the twin towers from a perspective not clouded by the recent tradegy of the towers. The author, Eric Danton in Divided We Stand (A Biography of New York's World Trade Center) is unflinching in looking at the creation of these towers on many fronts, including philosophical, economic and political, with the Rockefeller brothers playing the pivotal roles. This book glosses over or ignores the building's technical aspects, for those who are interested (and truthfully, it would have been helpful at times to keep things in perspective). The parts describing terrorism and the towers in ruins (and there are a number of times these are mentioned) are painfully chilling. This is a honest examination of an important part of New York (and now American) history.