Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It

About the Book

Who built the Empire State Building? Astonishingly, no list of workmen on this historic landmark was ever compiled. While the names of the owners, architects, and contractors are well known, and Lewis Hine's legendary portraits left us indelible images of the workers, their identities--the last generation of workmen still practicing these time-honored trades, have not been identified until author Glenn Kurtz unearthed their individual stories for this book.

Drawing on eclectic sources, Kurtz assembles biographies of these workers, providing not only a portrait of the building's labor force, and a revolutionary reinterpretation of Hine's world-famous photographs, but also a fundamental reimagining of what made the Empire State Building a fitting symbol for the nation, built as it was at the very height of the Great Depression.

For ninety years, photographer Lewis W. Hine's iconic portraits and photographs have served as potent symbols of America in the early 1930s. Yet as famous as Hine's images are, they have never been seen in their proper historical context. By identifying the individuals that built the early skyscraper, Men at Work transforms Hine's evocative portraits from abstract symbols of an era into documentary evidence of specific, working-class, immigrant, and indigenous American lives.

About the Author :
Glenn Kurtz is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film, which was named a Best Book of 2014 by the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. A documentary film, Three Minutes-A Lengthening, based on the book, was directed by Bianca Stigter, co-produced by Academy Award-winner Steve McQueen, and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. After premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, the film was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and received the inaugural Yad Vashem Award for Outstanding Holocaust Documentary. Glenn's first book, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music, garnered enthusiastic reviews from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. The recipient of a 2016-2017 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Glenn is a graduate of Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music and holds a PhD from Stanford University. P. J. Ochlan, an Audie Award-nominated and multiple AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, has recorded close to 200 audiobooks. His acting career spans more than thirty years and has included Broadway, the New York Shakespeare Festival (under Joseph Papp), critically acclaimed feature films, and regular roles in television series. Along the way, he's worked with countless icons, including Jodie Foster, Clint Eastwood, Robin Williams, Al Pacino, and Garry Marshall. Gary Tiedemann is a Florida and New York-based narrator, but learned how to act in Chicago's improv, sketch-comedy, and theater scene. He came to audiobook narration after voicing countless commercials and videos over a twenty-year voice-over career. When Gary is not in a booth, he is probably outside wondering if there is time to go camping.