The ego makers

New York, the 1980s. Greed is good and Henry Sabatini Martin is flying high. Still in his forties, he has taken his father's modest Long Island construction business and built it - through a combination of brains, ambition, energy, and ego - into one of the giants of the real estate industry. The jewel of The Martin Company's holdings is 355 Park Avenue, a spanking new skyscraper that is a soaring monument to the future of New York and the glory of its builders. Henry, it seems, has the golden touch. But in the background, not very far off the stage on which Henry struts, darkening clouds are gathering. Egos are inflated and investment portfolios overextended. For one thing, can the booming eighties, where office buildings fill before you complete them, where rents rise unfailingly year after year, go on forever? And will the forces of jealousy and anger that lurk in the shadows remain at bay, or strike at the first sign of vulnerability or weakness? Little signs, little worries: phone calls not returned; a sudden, inexplicable problem while flying the company helicopter into Manhattan, which could have proved fatal. A former mistress, and still the only woman he ever truly loved, has gone and married his business-partner brother, who increasingly despises him. The Ego Makers is about how our vaulting ambitions can indeed be reconciled with spiritual values, and even with love.