OWNERS’ CLUB
PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM PASS; JEFF BROWN/BREED MEDIA; TIZIANO CANU
The Books bought
Heesen’s spec-
built Project
Ruya and have
set about putting
their own stamp
on the interior –
including artwork
in the main
saloon,top,and
splashes of their
trademark orange“Yachtingisagreatwayto
keep your family together.
You know, ‘if you build it,
they will come’? If you have
a boat, your family comes
and spends time with you!”
Dream incarnate. Born the son of a rabbi
and raised on New York’s Lower East
Side, Book’s idea of boating as a child was
riding the Staten Island Ferry, which cost
five cents. But a little ingenuity propelled
him from immigrant’s son to serial
entrepreneur before he even graduated
from college.
“My first business was an accident,”
Book says. He was attending NYU in 1970
and discovered there were 21 colleges and
universities within the five boroughs of
New York City and all were sufering from
student housing shortages. The city was
also at the height of its financial crisis and
hotels were “in the doghouse”, as Book
puts it, reporting less than 50 per cent occupancy.
He saw an opportunity, and at only 19 he started
his first business, a student housing company
that worked with hotels to rent unused rooms to
students. This expanded to ofer rooms to young
professionals as well, with its reach soon growing
across the country and the world.
Book’s next business was a natural evolution.
“I had thousands of students in lots of diferent
hotels, and half of them couldn’t pay the rent each
month,” he says. “So I started a temp service to
find them jobs.” One of the students who was
constantly broke was particularly good at making
sandwiches, so Book came up with an angle.
“Around 11 o’clock every night, I’d send him to all
the rooms in hotels – just about the time when the
kids would start getting the munchies because
they were smoking grass – and he’d sell out his
sandwiches every night!”
By the time Book graduated, the temp service
was going strong, so he and a business partner
started an employment agency. This was just the
beginning of a long list of successful businesses
that he has helmed over the years. A decade ago,
he acquired what’s currently his biggest company,
Jet Support Services, Inc (JSSI), the world’s top
independent provider of aircraft maintenance
programmes. Book is the chairman and one of
his two sons, Neil, serves as CEO. JSSI has
headquarters in Europe, Asia and Chicago,
where Neil keeps his own boat on Lake Michigan.
“That’s his third boat in three years, so he’s
following in my footsteps,” Book says, beaming
with pride. “The first two boats were Sea Rays.
Next year I think he’ll move into a 75ft Viking;
and my grandson Sidney, who’s six, loves it!”
Being able to pass down the love of yachting
to their children and grandchildren is part of the
joy of yacht ownership for the Books. “Yachting125