The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City’s Citicorp Tower

Thirty years ago a New Yorker article, “The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis,” recounted the little-known drama of the threatened collapse of a Manhattan skyscraper. In a new book, The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City’s Citicorp Tower, author Michael Greenburg further investigates the full story of how in 1978 structural engineer William LeMessurier became aware of a critical flaw in his innovative design and the chain of events and responses that followed. A team of engineers and building experts mobilized to analyze and correct a miscalculation that, a generation before 9/11, threatened Midtown Manhattan with a catastrophic collapse of a major tower.

After Greenburg’s talk, he will be joined in conversation with Najib Abboud, a Managing Principal at Thornton Tomasetti, to discuss the professional practice and culture of structural engineering in the 1970s and today.

About the Speakers:

Michael M. Greenburg is a practicing attorney, a former member and editor of the Pepperdine Law Review, and an author of popular nonfiction. His previous books include The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of Liberty & America’s Forgotten Military Disaster, The Mad Bomber of New York: The Extraordinary True Story of the Manhunt that Paralyzed a City, and Peaches and Daddy: A Story of the Roaring 20’s, the Birth of Tabloid Media, and the Courtship that Captured the Heart and Imagination of the American Public.

Najib Abboud is a structural engineer and a Managing Principal at Thornton Tomasetti. He was one of the leaders of the forensic analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Center.