The Closing

Larry Silverstein grew up on the top floor of a seven-story walk-up. Charles Kushner spent his time in prison mentoring younger inmates. Faith Hope Consolo never took any of her husbands' last names so she could keep the same monogram on her luggage. Bob Knakal could have been a professional baseball player. David Walentas wishes he could tell his younger self what he now tells his son, Jed.

Since I started The Real Deal in 2003, we've covered the New York City real estate market's booms and busts, the companies that have dominated the industry and those who have fallen hard after billion-dollar losses. We've written about record-breaking deals that have helped shape the skyline and the bitter lawsuits that inevitably spring up when deals sour.

But at its heart, real estate is an industry full of characters. From the beginning, we've tried to reveal the personalities behind the deals, with all their passions and quirks. Nowhere does that shine through more than in The Closing interview, which appears on the back page of The Real Deal magazine each month.

Starting with Howard Lorber, chairman of Douglas Elliman, the city's largest real estate brokerage, more than 100 real estate icons - developers, agents, architects, lawyers and politicians who have shaped the face of the city - have been profiled in The Closing interviews that touch on both the personal and the professional, accompanied by portraits from award-winning photographers Hugh Hartshorne, Ben Baker and Marc Scrivo.

Just as we planned for the magazine to be a chronicle of the industry, "The Closing: Interviews with New York City's Titans of Real Estate," our first book based on these featured interviews, relays how these tenacious individuals became the best in their field, and as significantly, held onto their perches. As we all know, this is a city where every square foot is battled over, so that's no easy feat.

Never wanting to do puff pieces on the industry's elite, we have always asked the tough questions about deals gone bad, career setbacks and heartbreaks that inevitably occur in even the most charmed lives. Our subjects have experienced detours or outright failures, only to rise again stronger. Some have overcome the loss of loved ones or dealt with bankruptcy, failed partnerships or jail time.

Along with making for a fascinating read, this book confirms that our time on earth is entirely our own, and with a combination of luck and a lot of hard work, no obstacle is too large to cage human ambition, even when it comes to the toughest real estate market in the world .