“The tall building is the symbol of all that we hope for—height, reach, power, and a revolving restaurant with a long wine list—and all that we cower beneath. It is a symbol of oomph and of waste, the lighthouse of commerce and the outhouse of capitalism, the tallest candle on the biggest cake, and the cash-economy prison made up of countless anonymous cells. When the Empire State Building was being built, as Neal Bascomb reveals in his new book, the motive for its height was insistently said to be commercial—it was more economical, and the spire would be a place for wandering zeppelins to find a mooring—even though everyone knew that the real motive was just to be . . . taller.