Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams

By Mark Kingwell

Book Overview

This elegantly written appreciation of the Empire State Building opens up the building's richness and importance as an icon of America. The book leads us through the facts surrounding the skyscraper's conception and construction, then enters into a provocative theoretical discussion of its function as an icon, its representation in pictures, literature, and film, and the implications of its iconic status as New York's most important architectural monument to ambition and optimism. The Empire State Building literally cannot be seen in its totality, from any perspective. And paradoxically, this building of unmistakable solidity has been made invisible by familiarity and reproduction through imagery. Mark Kingwell encourages us to look beneath the strong physical presence of the building, to become aware of its evolving layers of meaning, and to see how the building lives within a unique imaginative space in the landscape of the American consciousness. He offers new ways of understanding the Empire State Building in all its complexity and surprising insights into its special role as an American icon.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300126123
• ISBN13: 9780300126129
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Kingwell's tribute to an American icon

In a very early chapter, Mark Kingwell makes clear his purpose for writing this book: "...my concern is the building's iconic function, its cultural role". And "Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams" examines just that. In one of the reviews above, there was a gripe about readers possibly being frustrated about the lack of technical and/or engineering discussions. I don't know, I was pretty impressed by the discussions that are presented here. But that's beside the point, and not the book's intention (there are several other books which talk about the engineering aspects of The Empire State Building). Written in a mixture of belles-lettres smoothness and philospohical reverie, Kingwell engages the reader with his introduction to some of the key characters behind the ESB's creation: Alfred Smith, John Jakob Raskob, and William Lamb, among others. But what gradually comes into focus is the building itself. Kingwell wisely reminds the reader that just as you cannot see the entire building from any single perspective, you cannot understand the building in any one way. From there on, he takes off on discussions of the skyscraper's meanings to New York City, America, and the world. And he further reminds us that a building doesn't just exist in space--it also exists in time. What the ESB has meant to different generations is given its appropriate amount of space and time in the book. For these reasons and several others, this book is well worth reading.