This was a quick, very emotional read. Although it does look to put Cantor Fitzgerald in a positive light, I believe it's correct to do so after reading this book.

Howard Lutnick faced loss, hearbreak, devastation, and choices that, hopefully, none of us will ever have to endure. I admire him for his courage, feel for his personal losses, and congratulate him on keeping his company (and, in turn, the families of those that were lost) together.

A really good read.

I actually got this book from the library, so I didn't actually buy it. But I wouldn't have felt bad about buying it, after reading it. Tom Barbash's writing makes you feel like you were right there interviewing and witnessing conversations with survivors and their families. I truely felt Howard Lutnick's loss for his brother and his other familiy at work. How mind blowing is it to know that almost 700 out of 1000 employees have died, and that you have to get your company back to what it was Sept. 10, 2 days after the attacks, so the Cantor families wouldn't be just put out in the cold. And during all of this, you still have to greave for your brother, best friend, and try to attend over 600 funerals of co-workers and friends you saw every day at work. It's a shame that the media tried to make Howard an escape goat. I've actually have a very different opinion now about Connie Chung than I did before. We always think the reporter, and especially a well known one, would give the audience all the facts instead of eskuing it to one side.
Some reviewers have said it's a propaganda book--some propaganda book! The pain all these people went through are real. And I doubt that if that same reviewer was in Howard Lutnick's shoes, he would have done any better under the circumstances.
In any event, the book was very eye opening and I have more of appreciation for the survivors and their feelings. I don't think I could now ask a Sept 11 survivior their story anymore. The healing has to begin somewhere, and after 5 years, I think it has begun.

When it comes to the world of finance, I'm a total idiot. I also don't spend much time thinking of such things, since I've never had enough money to invest in a savings account, much less comodities. So some of what the story is about eludes me. I can't identify with the amount of dollars being discussed, or the money these people make, but they become human because of the pain they endured and the losses they suffered. Cantor Fitzgerald suffered potential fatal harm that day and the people who struggled to pull the company out of the ashes are to be commended, as well as consoled. I had difficulty putting the book down once I started reading it. It is compelling. This is one of the few 9/11 books that should make it to your reading list.

This book is fabulous. As I read each page, the writer expressed the sorrow the people felt after this inhumane tragedy. Having worked in the bond market for 25 years, I was quite shocked when I read that if "Cantor" could not open and thus subsequentyly go under, the bond market would potentially collasped! Howard, you are a stronger man than you think. Although Mr. Lutnick lost so much on this day, he made the effort to put the company back together so that our free market economy would move on and prosper in the world. In my religion we refer to people like Howard Lutnik as "angels". Mr. Lutnik this book is so well worth the read! Many thanks for what you've done for our country, economy and your employees.

Bernie Cantor's innovation of a green screen with bond prices (launching Telerate) well rewarded its originators, as well as tag-alongs inside his firm.

Although very little was revealed to the general public until after 9/11, the prickly business history of Cantor is impossible to separate from its coarse industry image. Surviving spouses and families of the horribly murdered staff at the Tower, in this book's depictions, seem to reflect an obsession that money is the measure of all things. One doubts that was the way it was with these thousands of wounded grievers, and to a large degree that deprives them of their authentic voice and their humanity.

If all the pain could be erased, and history had been simply allowed to play out in the "business" world without 9/11 interjecting, Cantor could have been eventually judged without sentimentality. Now, it seems that what Cantor and its people were good at, and bad it, will be lost and forgotten if one relies on this single account.

The reviews reproduced here are a tribute to Tom Barbash, just as Barbash wrote the book as a tribute -- and an exhoneration -- to his college buddy Howard Lutnick. Therein lies the tale. Barbash and Lutnick have artfully exploited the suffering of others -- one to write a book (and to promote a novel), the other to strike an innocent pose. It worked! Look at the reviews that blindly defend the book and charge that any criticism of it is tantamount to insensitivity toward the victims of 9/11!

This is wonderful propaganda indeed, and if I were to grade it on that scale the book would get five stars. Lutnick's obsession with looking good and Barbash's equally atrocious commitment to whitewashing exploits grief as it turns anger onto others. Sickening.

Bill O'Reilly, who is far more sleazy than Walter Winchell was at Winchell's worst, accused Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor, Fitzgerald, of failing to meet his obligations to his employee's families when 700 of Cantor Fitzgerald's about 1000 employees died in the World Trade Center.

This book clearly and honestly shows, however, that Cantor, Fitzgerald as a small to medium business was unable to pay deceased employees after September 15 2001 for the very good reason that the events including the temporary closure of the markets, and the loss of the employees, cut off the company's air supply.

Instead and in a matter that hasn't been sufficiently celebrated because the media (including O'Reilly and Connie Chung) specializes in the dissemination of false ideas, Howard and the remaining employees of his company worked terribly hard while grieving so as to pay out a far more generous amount in bonuses and other renumeration. They brought Cantor Fitzgerald back from a near-death experience.

O'Reilly's attack had a nasty undertone of anti-semitism because it was conducted from the "point of view" of the "ordinary working person" who labors under the apprehension that ALL companies large and small have unused funds laying about the office and that NO business manager might not sweat bullets to meet each and every payroll.

O'Reilly then took credit for "forcing" Lutnick to do what the latter had been planning to do all along, which was pay compensation based on 4Q 2001 profits which would not have been earned had the salaries been continued.

A company like Cantor Fitzgerald is not a moral agent except insofar as it stays within the letter and spirit of the law, which Cantor Fitzgerald of course has done. But a *mensch* like Howard is indeed a moral agent and as such did not deserve to be precipitated, as a focus for inchoate rage, into a media spotlight in such a manner that for thousands of people (including former NYC mayor Ed Koch) he was merely "that guy, what's his name, who cried on TV and screwed up".

Indeed, the situation was an almost mathematical model of how the media destroys knowledge by instead marshaling false consciousness. Lutnick was a decent person, no more or less good than the average CEO. But O'Reilly nonetheless used the Fascism of marshaling anger against "the unmentionable odor of death" to boost his own ratings.

This week, a court decision has absolved Fox news from any responsibility to the truth in a case of two journalists fired from Fox based on their refusal to file a story according to Fox's rules. Here is another document in a growing case against this media empire which is also the mouthpiece for the Bush administration.

Lutnick made a mark of himself by crying on TV shortly after the September 11 tragedy and was subject, I believe, to a post-human campaign conducted by a bully and a thug.

This story needs to be kept alive today, since Dan Rather is under attack for his good-faith reportage of documents attesting to Bush's failure to meet his Guard obligations. Rather was misled by a forgery and there's a possibility that the forgery was provided through third parties by Karl Rove in order to discredit the Democrats, at least on this issue.

In other words, systematic "spinning", primarily from the Right, have created a post-human climate of mistrust in which a CEO cannot also be a *mensch*, faced with a tricky business situation in which the banks could have put him out of business had he in fact paid salaries after September 15th.

In fact, a basically good person would have accepted Lutnick's story because basically good people need to feel not quite so alone. There is nothing to profit from stories of people who betray their employees, or feed false documents to third parties, unless, of course, there's a pre-existing pattern.

At the end of the day, even the ordinary reader of the New York Times can say that O'Reilly and Rove are thugs and bums while Howard L is probably OK.

At the end of the day, even such an ordinary person can conclude that a society which is so consistently beguiled to believe instead the worst is a Fascist society with a capital F.

I read everyone's reviews. Here's mine: this is SOME story. Be grateful the truly gruesome details are not in the book, just the mildly nightmarish ones. The REAL story here is not the tragedy itself but how one man, Howard Lutnick, immediately came to the assistance of not just the families of his 677 murdered employees, but another 130 or so (800 total which includes everybody associated in any way with Cantor Fitzgerald on that day) both financially and emotionally. HOW MANY OTHER CORPORATE CEO'S DO YOU KNOW that gave 5 years of paychecks/bonuses and 10 years of health insurance to the survivor's families? I haven't found another one yet; please enlighten me if you do. Additionally, he gave out his home phone number to EVERYONE and opened the doors of his home too for months. They held board meetings in the closet. Yes the man has a few million in the bank but within days of 9/11, he moved $1,000,000 of it immediately into the newly established Relief Fund without a second thought. I really admire the man. But .. this is the reason some of us are born leaders and CEO's and some of us .. choose to do other things in life. I thought the book was a wonderful testament of what some people find important in their lifetimes and move mountains to achieve it because this is exactly who they are. I laugh when I read the reveiws of those that find the book 'self serving' in Howard's behalf. The people that had their lives ruined by 9/11 got a truly wonderful advocate for such a horrible situation with Howard. God bless the man and I wish the best for everyone affected by 9/11. I highly recommend the book.

When September 11, 2001 began No one would know the evil that they were going to witness that day. By the end of that day company Cantor Fitzgeral would face the heavyest losses with nearly 700 employees gone. "On top of the world" by Tom Barbash, takes a inside look at the days,weeks,and months as CEO Howard Lutnick and remaining staff trys to move foward for the families of lost employees.
This is really good book that show each of us as human and our quest to help others.

This book is exceptionally powerful, reasonably well-written and blatantly self-serving. The good aspects overwhelm the bad by a wide margin.

Everyone has heard the story by now, but what makes this so powerful is the reality behind the story. First-hand accounts of the horror, and perhaps most importantly, the aftermath within the whole of the Cantor family are especially moving.

Even though this book was clearly written "through" Lutnick, his journey through the aftermath of 9/11 and the importance of his actions cannot be diminished. The ways in which the national news media sensationalized the tragedy for their own ratings is nauseating - although not surprising. Despite the fact that Connie Chung and O'Reilly no longer remain in the national arena of respected journalists, it is frustrating that they worked so hard to sabotage the healing process of the victim's families, and exploit the emotional fog which overcame them by instigating fear and helplessness.

Throughout the last few months of 2001, Lutnick does well to counter the national media's feeble attempts at honest story-telling, and shows in his actions what he had promised from the very beginning of the aftermath. He did in fact take care of these families, and in a way that goes well above and beyond what most would consider "reasonable."

A great read, impossible to put down. Just keep in mind that the author is great friends with Lutnick.

Before 9/11, I had never heard of Harold Lutnick, let alone Cantor Fitzgerald. From that day forward, Cantor Fitzgerald has been ingrained into my head forever. I did not want to put this book down. The story is told by Harold Lutnick and his friend Tom Barbash as well as a few surviving Cantor employees. The beginning of the book is a lot to take in; it was like reliving 9/11 all over again. Out of 1000 employees, Cantor lost over 600 people. After a few media interviews, Howard was made out to be a horrible person. He stopped paying all deceased and missing employees right away. He did this so that the company could survive and pay money to the families of the survivors. Many people actually questioned whether his tears were phony or not. Some parts of this book were difficult to comprehend. A lot of people seemed to be more concerned with money than anything else. This is a must read for everyone.

I was unfamiliar with Mr. Lutnick or his company before 9/11 as I do not work in the investment arena. However, like many Americans, I was glued to the screen during the tragedy on that date and during the aftermath.

For me, that day held a dual personal note in that I have personally spent lots of time at the Trade Center when in NYC on business (the WTC Marriott was always my hotel choice), I actually had visited my brother's office there at the Trade Center with my 2 year old daughter a week to the day before the attack (for the Labor Day holiday).

My brother works for Merrill Lynch, and on that day, I was uncertain for hours whether he had survived. Fortunately, he did. Therefore, unlike many on the West Coast,due to my brother's proximity to the situation, I felt particularly attached to the tragedy. Thankfully, I fortunately do not share the fact of loss of a loved one on 9/11. Nevertheless, I felt keenly what that loss would be like during the several hours that I feared that I had lost my brother.

All of this is to say that -- I know how difficult it must be for Mr. Lutnick to have lost his brother and close friends yet bear responsibility for keeping his company afloat in the midst of grieving.

I am an employee benefits/employment law attorney and when I saw Mr. Lutnick on television that first night indicating that he would "take care of the families" I immediately thought -- does he realize what a commitment he is making? From a purely legal standpoint, his promise was far outside of his actual liability under the circumstances. It was clear to me that his promises were stated without benefit of legal advice -- simply from his sense of personal loss and sense of responsibility.

From that point, I have followed the news on Cantor as Mr. Lutnick's grief that first evening so touched me. I thank him for sharing the moving story of those first weeks during the aftermath with readers. I am amazed that anyone doubts his sincerity. I sincerely hope that the company continues to thrive and that Mr. Lutnick is vindicated.

The fortitude demonstrated by this man during this personal tragedy sheds light on why he has been so successful professionally. It was courageous of him to reveal the personal tragedies and challenges that he has had to surmount along the way in his life.

My life experiences as a Black woman are quite removed from the lavish lifestyle that Mr. Lutnick probably enjoyed in his position at Cantor. Yet, I can fully appreciate his compassion, dedication, loyalty and hard work ethic that has sustained him through this ordeal. As far as I am concerned, the man is a real life hero due to the humanity of his spirit. I wish him and his company well.