The Means and Ends to Creating Great Spaces

"...outside of Central Park, Rockefeller Center is the handsomest great space in New York City and, for that matter, in the U.S. In an era when the public realm barely gets even lip service anymore, it is proof that the profit motive and the general good can coexist, that beauty can lie down with the beast and give birth to grandeur, civility and ordinary sunlit life....More than just a supremely entertaining book, Daniel Okrent's cartwheeling account of how Rock Center came together is indispensable for anyone looking for reason to believe — and who isn't? — that we can pull off the same miracle where the World Trade Center stood. What we learn from Okrent, a former editor of LIFE magazine, is how a group of mismatched and combustible characters could make the thing happen. It didn't require much. All they had to do was undertake a project that would have stumped the pharaohs, fight like pit vipers, face down the Depression, fend off naysayers on all sides and still produce what Okrent calls an 'aesthetic, commercial, and — there's no other word for it — emotional success.'"