This just in: “Michael Gross’s House of Outrageous Fortune is a book about a building the way Moby Dick is a book about a fish. History, real-estate wheeling and dealing, the economics of the buccaneer class, the arcane realpolitik of condos and co-ops, even floor-plans: it’s all here. If you want to find out why Manhattan’s skyline looks the way it currently does, this is the book to read.” —Amanda Vaill author of Hotel Florida and Everybody Was So Young