On Top of the World - Softcover

Tom Barbash

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0755311639 ISBN 13: 9780755311637

Publisher: Headline Paperbacks, 2003

Synopsis

Of all the companies affected by the attacks of 11 September, none was more devastated than Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services conglomerate, who lost 658 people. CEO Howard Lutnick survived only because he had taken his son to school that day. He vowed to restore the company. but how can you focus on work when your brother and best friend are among those murdered? How can you grieve when all the families are looking to you to be strong and help them? How can you help them when some of your rivals are trying to take advantage and you have to save the business? How Lutnick and those around him sought to balance all of these tasks and succeeded is a truly inspirational tale from the supposedly heartless world of Wall Street.

About this title

Review

In the attacks of September 11, 2001, 658 of New York brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald's 1,000 New York employees were killed. Immediately following the events, author Tom Barbash traveled to New York to profile his college friend, Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick, and chronicle the firm's struggles to stay in business and help its employees' families. The result, On Top of the World, is a compulsively readable book that is difficult to categorize. Unlike many books about the attacks, its story goes well beyond September 11 and into the following year, helping to better demonstrate the human impact of the catastrophe. And while the book ably describes the horror of the events, it is as much a business study as anything: can a company that trades $200 billion a day in commodities futures survive the sudden death of over 65 percent of its New York employees, and its New York headquarters? Cantor Fitzgerald does endure, but soon Lutnick becomes the center of a media firestorm as Connie Chung, Bill O'Reilly from Fox News, and others question the sincerity of Lutnick's public appearances and denounce his method of compensating the families of those lost. Barbash, a novelist by trade, portrays his friend's struggles sympathetically but also provides well-researched dimension to the other people involved, which helps deepen the human drama of the efforts on the part of all involved to put their lives and their company back together. --John Moe

About the Author

Tom Barbash met Howard Lutnick at Haverford College, where they were both on the tennis team. An award-winning novelist and reporter, he currently teaches at Stanford. He stayed with Howard Lutnick's family throughout the months after 9/11 writing this personal eye-witness account of what happened.

Edition details

• Publisher: Headline Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0755311639
• ISBN 13: 9780755311637
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304