High steel: the daring men who built the world's greatest skyline, 1881 to the present

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From Publishers WeeklyInspired by a New York Times article Rasenberger wrote on ironworkers in early 2001, this historical overview of skyscraper construction in New York City and elsewhere traces the erection of such structures as the Flatiron and Chrysler buildings, the Empire State Building, the George Washington Bridge, the World Trade Center and the lavish new Time Warner Center. This last building is the narrative column around which Rasenberger builds his book, which is largely devoted to "the men who risked the most and labored the hardest"the ironworkers who put the high-rise steel columns in place. Though his admiration at times seems compulsory rather than genuine, Rasenberger emphasizes the often heroic, death-defying feats ironworkers perform. He also takes account of far-flung communities that breed ironworkers, such as the Mohawk Indians of upstate New York. The chronological history is broken up by alternating sections on the Time Warner Center and often feels less like a single narrative than a collection of vignettes. Rasenberger's principal claim, that ironwork's days are numbered because of the growing reliance on concrete, is often lost in the telling. Even the Time Warner Center was built more with concrete than iron, which is costlier and more vulnerable to heat in events such as the World Trade Center attacks. This recounting, while less than fully absorbing, serves as a valuable history for building enthusiasts and a thoughtful testament to a dying craft that has helped fuel the American economy for more than a century. 21 b&w photos. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FromJourneying through the past century of New York City's ironworking trade, Rasenberger recounts signal events in its labor history while developing a powerful impression of its unique occupational culture. The latter he absorbed from close ground- and sky-level observation of ironworkers at two mid-Manhattan construction sites, and at the World Trade Center site. Raising steel for bridges and skyscrapers is extraordinarily hazardous. Several of the workers profiled sustained severe and, in one instance, permanently disabling injuries--painfully proving ironwork's annual 5 percent death-and-injury rate. Why any man would court its dangers is a tantalizing question to which Rasenberger advances a multitude of answers. One is generational continuity, which Rasenberger discerned from his trips to the homes of Mohawk Indians and Newfoundlanders who've worked in the trade for decades. Another is the autonomy on the job that ironworkers enjoy, and the pride they derive from being the first colonists of a square of air. With ironworkers' social prestige elevated in the aftermath of the WTC calamity, Rasenberger's muscular portrait deserves an outsize audience as well. Gilbert TaylorCopyright American Library Association. All rights reserved