Billionaires' Row by Katherine Clarke with Julie Satow

Journalist Katherine Clarke launches her fly-on-the-wall account of the ferocious ambition, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world, in conversation with Julie Satow.

“A necessary book about how not to build a city." —Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New York, New York

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A fly-on-the-wall account of the ferocious ambition, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world: the new Manhattan megatowers known as Billionaires’ Row—from a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal

To look south and skyward from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global wealth: a series of soaring spires stretching from Park Avenue to Broadway. Known as Billionaires’ Row, this set of slender high-rise residences has transformed the skyline of New York City, thanks to developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and foreign oligarchs. And chances are most of us will never be invited to step inside.

In Billionaires’ Row, Katherine Clarke reveals the captivating story of how, in just a few years, the ruthless real-estate impresarios behind these “supertalls” lining 57th Street turned what was once a run-down strip of Midtown into the most exclusive street on Earth, as legendary Trump-era veterans went toe-to-toe with hungry upstart developers in an ego-fueled “race to the sky.” Based on far-reaching access to real estate’s power players, Clarke’s account brings readers inside one of the world’s most cutthroat industries, showing how a combination of ferocious ambition and relentless salesmanship has created a new market of $100 million apartments for the world’s one-percenters—units to live in or, sometimes, just places to stash their cash.

Filled with eye-popping stories that bring the new era of extreme wealth inequality into vivid relief, Billionaires’ Row is a juicy, gimlet-eyed account of the genius, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world—a stranger-than-fiction saga of broken partnerships, broken marriages, lawsuits, and, for a few, fleeting triumph.

Katherine Clarke is a reporter and writer based in New York City. She covers the high-end real estate market for The Wall Street Journal and is the author of "Billionaires' Row," the story behind the construction of some of New York's most expensive supertall buildings. Previously, she wrote for the New York Daily News and The Real Deal. Originally from Northern Ireland, she attended Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Julie Satow is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel, a New York Times’ Editor’s Choice and NPR Favorite Book. Hew new book, Rag Dolls of Fifth Avenue: How Women Ruled Department Stores and Revolutionized American Fashion, is being published next spring by Doubleday.

A regular contributor to the New York Times, her work has also appeared on National Public Radio, Bloomberg Businessweek, Travel + Leisure, and elsewhere. A graduate of Columbia College, she has a Master’s Degree from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs. She lives in Gramercy with her husband and two children.

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