Blurbs For The Liar’s Ball
Vicky Ward has done it again. She has taken a subject and a cast of characters, many of whom we would not invite to dinner, and woven a page-turning, compelling tale. She transforms real estate players, who to most of us are stick figures, into pulsating characters. Yes, they are greedy. But they also can be visionary and vulnerable, and damn interesting.
The New Yorker
This riveting book is far more than an expose of ambition, greed, and business acumen (which, it turns out, is composed in equal parts of hubris, chutzpah, and sheer brilliance) at the apex of the New York real estate world. It is also a most subtle analysis of character, motive, passion, and rivalries, the stuff of which great fiction is made. The Liar’s Ball will be a revelation to those of us who’ve always wondered how real estate tycoons become billionaires one day and can go bankrupt the next. I couldn’t put this book down. It’s a romp of a read.
Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
The story of the world’s most valuable office building is a gripping tale of boom and bust, battling billionaires, and huge egos flirting with disaster in their relentless, debt-financed pursuit of the ultimate trophy deal. Vicky Ward sheds fresh light on tycoons from Donald Trump to Steve Jobs as the brilliantly explores the vision and fragility at the heart of the most volatile part of American capitalism.
New York Bureau Chief, The Economist
Lucid, action filled, and built on astounding access—how did she get all that information?⎯to some of the most powerful and secretive men (yes, all men) in the world. And a rip-roaring read as well.
Editor in Chief, Town & Country
The Liar’s Ball is about men with edifice complexes. In this case, the ones who have left their mark all over New York City. Thanks to Vicky Ward, one of the most secretive, ruthless and successful boys’ clubs has been expressed. This is a fascinating and unput-downable book.
author of A World on Fire
Jacket Copy
The Liar’s Ball is about the desperate scramble that ensued when the world’s most expensive building went on the auction block. The iconic GM Building brought out the best and worst in New York’s real estate royalty, and left a few of them to ruin. But as author and former Vanity Fair contributing editor Vicky Ward discovered, the storm of the GM Building is about much more than real estate.
The Liar’s Ball is a story of naked, unregulated capitalism, of the sometimes bloody free-for-all of the free market. It’s a tale of brilliant and enormously ambitious billionaires fighting bare-knuckled to get what they want. And they all wanted the GM Building.
Through over 200 interviews with real estate’s best and brightest–Donald Trump, Harry Macklowe, Samuel Zell, Mort Zuckerman, and many more–New York Times bestselling author Vicky Ward exposes the lies and schemes and insecurities behind the deals made by some of the world’s biggest egos. The Liar’s Ball is the riveting real-life tale of just how far people would go to get the money, power, and attention they so desperately crave.