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September 11: An Oral History
About 3,000 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. Thousands more narrowly escaped, their survival a result of eerily prescient spur-of-the-moment decisions, acts of superhuman courage, the unfailing kindness of strangers, and, in some cases, fortuitous strokes of luck. September 11: An Oral History unites the voices of that day. It is at once a dramatic reminder of one of the most devastating events in history of the nation and a tribute to the spirit of cooperation and the outpourings of empathy that marked that day for so many people in the United States and abrad.
Written and compiled by Dean E. Murphy, who covered the attacks on the World Trade Center for the New York Times , September 11: An Oral History presents vivid eyewitness accounts by those who rushed to the scene, as well as the stories of people around the country and abroad who watched as events unfolded on television and waited for news of friends, family, and acquaintances.
A priest who runs an adoption center near the WTC paints an unforgettable portrait of what he calls "the meeting place of Hell and Earth that morning"; a businessman from Los Angeles in New York to conduct a training seminar recounts in breathstopping detail his descent with a blind colleague from the 78th floor of the North Tower; a senior at a high school; the owners of a small business in Arkansas describe their thoughts and feelings as they waited to hear from a customer who had become part of their lives though they had never actually met him; and a civilian employee at the Pentagon recalls giving up hope in a smoke-filled office, her hair on fire, only to be led to safety by the soothing voice of a colleague.
Contributions from firefighters, police, and military personnel, and other rescue workers demonstrate the mixture of professionalism and humanity that justly elevated them, despite their own modesty, to the status of national heroes. There are stories, too, of those who narrowly missed being part of the mayhem--including a family of four who changed their plane reservations from one of the hijacked jets and others whose arrivals at work were delayed by unlikely coincidences and quirks of fate like forgetting to turn on the coffeepot the night before.
The first and only oral history of September 11 that presents people from all walks of life, these poignant, often harrowing vignettes capture the grief, rage, and fear that gripped the nationj--and offer an intimate, inspiring look at the strengths that enabled us to move on.
Written and compiled by Dean E. Murphy, who covered the attacks on the World Trade Center for the New York Times , September 11: An Oral History presents vivid eyewitness accounts by those who rushed to the scene, as well as the stories of people around the country and abroad who watched as events unfolded on television and waited for news of friends, family, and acquaintances.
A priest who runs an adoption center near the WTC paints an unforgettable portrait of what he calls "the meeting place of Hell and Earth that morning"; a businessman from Los Angeles in New York to conduct a training seminar recounts in breathstopping detail his descent with a blind colleague from the 78th floor of the North Tower; a senior at a high school; the owners of a small business in Arkansas describe their thoughts and feelings as they waited to hear from a customer who had become part of their lives though they had never actually met him; and a civilian employee at the Pentagon recalls giving up hope in a smoke-filled office, her hair on fire, only to be led to safety by the soothing voice of a colleague.
Contributions from firefighters, police, and military personnel, and other rescue workers demonstrate the mixture of professionalism and humanity that justly elevated them, despite their own modesty, to the status of national heroes. There are stories, too, of those who narrowly missed being part of the mayhem--including a family of four who changed their plane reservations from one of the hijacked jets and others whose arrivals at work were delayed by unlikely coincidences and quirks of fate like forgetting to turn on the coffeepot the night before.
The first and only oral history of September 11 that presents people from all walks of life, these poignant, often harrowing vignettes capture the grief, rage, and fear that gripped the nationj--and offer an intimate, inspiring look at the strengths that enabled us to move on.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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May 2, 2010
My 2002 S.F. Chronicle review:
We all did a lot of forgetting last fall. There was simply no other way. Days or weeks or even months of immersion in the shock of Sept. 11 had to give way, eventually, to turning away from that inner pain and bewilderment so many of us felt. Now it's time to turn back. We all have to decide how -- and what - - we want to remember.
The huge crop of books now being published about the Sept. 11 attacks -- four of which are considered here -- serve to reproduce that sickening sense of disbelief and incapacity that swept us away a year ago. Even those of us who spent days glued to CNN last September may not have known, for example, that probably the single most powerful image from Sept. 11 has a ghoulish subtext: the dozens of forms seen leaping to sure death from the upper reaches of the twin towers, suspended in air for a few terrifying seconds, include one who smashed into a firefighter on the ground, leaving both dead.
Is that a detail too terrible to know? Are eyewitness accounts of the horrific scene that day in World Trade Center Plaza also too terrible? Do we really need to read, for example, about a 10-yard-long pool of blood, or a body impaled on a pole after the long fall from above, or a severed hand that seems to be waving to a rescue worker racing past? Do we really need to hear so many descriptions of the hijacked jetliners' engines being gunned, just before impact, that it's almost unavoidable to sit bolt upright in bed at night, the sound seemingly echoing in your ears?
Perhaps not. But a year later, two things seem clear about Sept. 11. One, it was first and foremost a personal drama, lived directly by many thousands of people, indirectly by many millions more; it was a global tragedy that is real only in the context of how each person lived it -- or did not get to live it, not all of it, anyway. Two, any wisdom we can gain, collectively, about what it all meant, or what it tells us about the U.S. role in the world, depends on seeing it, first and always, as an overlay of all these personal stories, even if they are often quite disturbing.
It's possible to recoil in disgust at the tawdry overkill sure to characterize anniversary media coverage without letting it become numbing -- possible, but not easy. But one thing that is not possible is to sanitize the obscenity of the attacks. Honest people can disagree about how to remember Sept. 11, but if we try to shield ourselves from the palpable horror it represented, we are not remembering it -- only glancing backward down a media hall of mirrors that tells us nothing about ourselves or the day itself.
Only by retaining a sense of just how bad that day got for so many people can we heed the encouraging glimpse it provided of a basic decency in just about everyone involved that day. The role of rescue workers has been widely and justly celebrated, and many of us will do our best to keep in mind that awe and appreciation every time we come across a firefighter or cop for the rest of our lives. But the men and women in those roles already knew their job was to rescue and, often, to be heroes. Perhaps even more astonishing are the many, many people who reacted to the crisis with selflessness and generosity. Those good qualities are best remembered in the context of panic and terror.
"I saw firefighters and FBI people," a World Trade Center employee named Roselyn Braud tells us in September 11: An Oral History by Dean E. Murphy (Doubleday; 272 pages; $22.95), describing the scene in the shopping concourse below the towers. " 'Get out of here,' they were yelling. 'Run for your lives! Run for your lives!' People were crawling on the floor of the shopping concourse, fighting to get up the stairs at the Borders bookstore. No one was helping anyone. The strongest survived. People were climbing over each other."
Yet again and again, dazed people stumbling through the darkness -- especially in the dust typhoons that descended when each of the towers fell -- were helped by strangers, pulled toward safety, given a towel to breathe through, water, soothing words, whatever was needed. Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley's vice president for security, actually sang to keep people calm as he herded them out of the building -- a detail that might seem unbelievable if a writer of James B. Stewart's caliber had not chosen to tell us Rescorla's life story in The Heart of a Soldier (Simon & Schuster; 307 pages; $24). Rescorla fought in Vietnam, even though he was a British citizen at the time, and proved himself then as a true hero and a remarkable man -- long before he went back for one last sweep on Sept. 11, after all his company's employees were cleared out, sacrificing his own life.
Stewart ("Blood Sport") brings Rescorla's story alive so vividly and thoroughly, it's only a matter of time before a Rescorla film hits the big screen (the Mel Gibson character in "We Were Soldiers" was based in part on Rescorla). His story deserves that and more -- Rescorla and his best friend accurately identified the threat of terrorism against the World Trade Center and warned the authorities; Rescorla's best friend, Thomas Hill, also an imaginative military tactician, even went to great lengths to put together a detailed, credible plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Repeated meetings with interested FBI agents ultimately led to disappointment, however. That's no huge surprise, of course, but the tale of Hill's and Rescorla's warnings does eerily sum up that at least to some experts, Sept. 11 was not the shock it was to most of us.
Richard Bernstein's superbly written overall chronicle of the events leading up to Sept. 11, Out of the Blue: A Narrative of September 11, 2001 (Henry Holt; 320 pages; $25), draws on the reporting of the entire New York Times staff to bring alive the background with a subtlety and mastery that could almost make Sept. 11 seem unsurprising. Noting that bin Laden -- and most of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- were all originally from Saudi Arabia, he writes:
"The belief of many American officials is that Saudi Arabia actually encouraged its disaffected young men to join the jihadists abroad as a way of deflecting attention away from problems of corruption, dictatorship, nepotism, and poverty inside the country."
But as important as it is to look rationally at the why of what happened, from the perspective of one year later, it still seems as though what Sept. 11 will probably convey for years to come is a shorthand evocation of utter shock,
along with questions about how we or anyone respond in the face of such shock.
"I said to a cop in a car, 'What's the most direct way to get to Park Avenue South?' " L.A. Times reporter Geraldine Baum recounts in Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11 by the Newseum with Cathi Trost and Alicia C. Shepard (Rowman & Littlefield; 256 pages; $29.95). "He asked, 'You want a ride?' I got in the back of the cruiser. He blurted out, 'We lost the day tour. We lost our whole day tour.' And he started to cry. He took me right to the office. . . . I asked, 'What shall I do tomorrow?' Dean Baquet, managing editor in L.A., was on a speakerphone. Dean said, 'Focus in, Geraldine. Do one precinct.' That was a really good idea."
Focusing in may still make a lot of sense. We as a country are still coming to terms with the riddle of how to respond, both in the sense of how we see ourselves and how we mobilize U.S. power around the world. It may be that lessons about our basic humanity remain unlearned, buried under the debris of all we experienced in the Sept. 11 aftermath, and we need to do some digging to reclaim them.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...
This article appeared on page RV - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
We all did a lot of forgetting last fall. There was simply no other way. Days or weeks or even months of immersion in the shock of Sept. 11 had to give way, eventually, to turning away from that inner pain and bewilderment so many of us felt. Now it's time to turn back. We all have to decide how -- and what - - we want to remember.
The huge crop of books now being published about the Sept. 11 attacks -- four of which are considered here -- serve to reproduce that sickening sense of disbelief and incapacity that swept us away a year ago. Even those of us who spent days glued to CNN last September may not have known, for example, that probably the single most powerful image from Sept. 11 has a ghoulish subtext: the dozens of forms seen leaping to sure death from the upper reaches of the twin towers, suspended in air for a few terrifying seconds, include one who smashed into a firefighter on the ground, leaving both dead.
Is that a detail too terrible to know? Are eyewitness accounts of the horrific scene that day in World Trade Center Plaza also too terrible? Do we really need to read, for example, about a 10-yard-long pool of blood, or a body impaled on a pole after the long fall from above, or a severed hand that seems to be waving to a rescue worker racing past? Do we really need to hear so many descriptions of the hijacked jetliners' engines being gunned, just before impact, that it's almost unavoidable to sit bolt upright in bed at night, the sound seemingly echoing in your ears?
Perhaps not. But a year later, two things seem clear about Sept. 11. One, it was first and foremost a personal drama, lived directly by many thousands of people, indirectly by many millions more; it was a global tragedy that is real only in the context of how each person lived it -- or did not get to live it, not all of it, anyway. Two, any wisdom we can gain, collectively, about what it all meant, or what it tells us about the U.S. role in the world, depends on seeing it, first and always, as an overlay of all these personal stories, even if they are often quite disturbing.
It's possible to recoil in disgust at the tawdry overkill sure to characterize anniversary media coverage without letting it become numbing -- possible, but not easy. But one thing that is not possible is to sanitize the obscenity of the attacks. Honest people can disagree about how to remember Sept. 11, but if we try to shield ourselves from the palpable horror it represented, we are not remembering it -- only glancing backward down a media hall of mirrors that tells us nothing about ourselves or the day itself.
Only by retaining a sense of just how bad that day got for so many people can we heed the encouraging glimpse it provided of a basic decency in just about everyone involved that day. The role of rescue workers has been widely and justly celebrated, and many of us will do our best to keep in mind that awe and appreciation every time we come across a firefighter or cop for the rest of our lives. But the men and women in those roles already knew their job was to rescue and, often, to be heroes. Perhaps even more astonishing are the many, many people who reacted to the crisis with selflessness and generosity. Those good qualities are best remembered in the context of panic and terror.
"I saw firefighters and FBI people," a World Trade Center employee named Roselyn Braud tells us in September 11: An Oral History by Dean E. Murphy (Doubleday; 272 pages; $22.95), describing the scene in the shopping concourse below the towers. " 'Get out of here,' they were yelling. 'Run for your lives! Run for your lives!' People were crawling on the floor of the shopping concourse, fighting to get up the stairs at the Borders bookstore. No one was helping anyone. The strongest survived. People were climbing over each other."
Yet again and again, dazed people stumbling through the darkness -- especially in the dust typhoons that descended when each of the towers fell -- were helped by strangers, pulled toward safety, given a towel to breathe through, water, soothing words, whatever was needed. Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley's vice president for security, actually sang to keep people calm as he herded them out of the building -- a detail that might seem unbelievable if a writer of James B. Stewart's caliber had not chosen to tell us Rescorla's life story in The Heart of a Soldier (Simon & Schuster; 307 pages; $24). Rescorla fought in Vietnam, even though he was a British citizen at the time, and proved himself then as a true hero and a remarkable man -- long before he went back for one last sweep on Sept. 11, after all his company's employees were cleared out, sacrificing his own life.
Stewart ("Blood Sport") brings Rescorla's story alive so vividly and thoroughly, it's only a matter of time before a Rescorla film hits the big screen (the Mel Gibson character in "We Were Soldiers" was based in part on Rescorla). His story deserves that and more -- Rescorla and his best friend accurately identified the threat of terrorism against the World Trade Center and warned the authorities; Rescorla's best friend, Thomas Hill, also an imaginative military tactician, even went to great lengths to put together a detailed, credible plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Repeated meetings with interested FBI agents ultimately led to disappointment, however. That's no huge surprise, of course, but the tale of Hill's and Rescorla's warnings does eerily sum up that at least to some experts, Sept. 11 was not the shock it was to most of us.
Richard Bernstein's superbly written overall chronicle of the events leading up to Sept. 11, Out of the Blue: A Narrative of September 11, 2001 (Henry Holt; 320 pages; $25), draws on the reporting of the entire New York Times staff to bring alive the background with a subtlety and mastery that could almost make Sept. 11 seem unsurprising. Noting that bin Laden -- and most of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- were all originally from Saudi Arabia, he writes:
"The belief of many American officials is that Saudi Arabia actually encouraged its disaffected young men to join the jihadists abroad as a way of deflecting attention away from problems of corruption, dictatorship, nepotism, and poverty inside the country."
But as important as it is to look rationally at the why of what happened, from the perspective of one year later, it still seems as though what Sept. 11 will probably convey for years to come is a shorthand evocation of utter shock,
along with questions about how we or anyone respond in the face of such shock.
"I said to a cop in a car, 'What's the most direct way to get to Park Avenue South?' " L.A. Times reporter Geraldine Baum recounts in Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11 by the Newseum with Cathi Trost and Alicia C. Shepard (Rowman & Littlefield; 256 pages; $29.95). "He asked, 'You want a ride?' I got in the back of the cruiser. He blurted out, 'We lost the day tour. We lost our whole day tour.' And he started to cry. He took me right to the office. . . . I asked, 'What shall I do tomorrow?' Dean Baquet, managing editor in L.A., was on a speakerphone. Dean said, 'Focus in, Geraldine. Do one precinct.' That was a really good idea."
Focusing in may still make a lot of sense. We as a country are still coming to terms with the riddle of how to respond, both in the sense of how we see ourselves and how we mobilize U.S. power around the world. It may be that lessons about our basic humanity remain unlearned, buried under the debris of all we experienced in the Sept. 11 aftermath, and we need to do some digging to reclaim them.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...
This article appeared on page RV - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
June 8, 2018
I was young when 9/11 happened but I will never forget that day. I remember my mother coming home in the late afternoon absolutely covered in dust, screaming and crying and screaming and I was so confused (having been in detention that day and not fully registering what had happened). I remember sneaking into the back bedroom and turning on the TV to watch Batman Beyond after school and just seeing those buildings. I remember my mother many years later attempting to explain to me what she saw (she was 5 blocks away) and describing the dust and smoke and screams and smacks of impact on pavement by NY jumpers before ultimately breaking down...it was a lot. And it was life changing for me, as we soon moved further and further west, all the way to AZ. As a result my mother still deals with panic attacks and our family has pretty much remembered not to mention that date or turn on the TV on the 11th. I try not to think about it at all.
That is what made the decision to pick up this book interesting to me. It took me over 4 months to read off and on, as I kept picking it up and then losing the urge to continue. I felt that it would bring back bad personal memories, but would be deep, moving, and from the words of the people who lived it. Those whose lives were affected just as mine was. Those profiled were diverse and included everyone from people trying desperately to find a way home in complete and utter terror to the paramedics who were setting up triads 200 yards from the base of the Towers before they collapsed; from the ordinary citizens who tried to get on with their lives in the days following to the many more who held out hope that their family member or friend had survived, only to find out the truth in heartbreaking fashion.
Be warned, the book is graphic. Scenes of death are described, and much like the event they are harrowing and will make your stomach churn. Much like the tragedy this book is raw and heartbreaking. It is also extremely powerful. I almost feel inappropriate writing a review on this; it is as I feel I'm almost not entitled to speak on it. However it's a part of history and my own life as well, and a sobering reminder to me of life, and how that should be remembered, while celebrating and bringing joy to those with us.
That is what made the decision to pick up this book interesting to me. It took me over 4 months to read off and on, as I kept picking it up and then losing the urge to continue. I felt that it would bring back bad personal memories, but would be deep, moving, and from the words of the people who lived it. Those whose lives were affected just as mine was. Those profiled were diverse and included everyone from people trying desperately to find a way home in complete and utter terror to the paramedics who were setting up triads 200 yards from the base of the Towers before they collapsed; from the ordinary citizens who tried to get on with their lives in the days following to the many more who held out hope that their family member or friend had survived, only to find out the truth in heartbreaking fashion.
Be warned, the book is graphic. Scenes of death are described, and much like the event they are harrowing and will make your stomach churn. Much like the tragedy this book is raw and heartbreaking. It is also extremely powerful. I almost feel inappropriate writing a review on this; it is as I feel I'm almost not entitled to speak on it. However it's a part of history and my own life as well, and a sobering reminder to me of life, and how that should be remembered, while celebrating and bringing joy to those with us.
December 11, 2019
Review to come. These stories will never stop being important.
January 25, 2019
The first Oral History book I’ve read on 9/11 and it was illuminating, moving and even uplifting. Some of the interviewees are still struggling to come to terms with their experiences and this is understandably clear throughout the book. Some of the witness accounts are harrowing but provide unprecedented levels of detail in trying to get your head around the events of the day. I would 100% recommend this book to anyone with an intrigue surrounding September 11 and what it must have been like to witness the terror of 9/11.
September 9, 2020
They Were There
I am very picky about giving five stars. Four stars to me is very nearly perfect. There isn't a lot of reason to give more. I make an exception in two cases: 1. If a book is so extraordinary and brilliantly written that it makes me manic with its artistry to the point of nearly running down the street (and I'm in a wheelchair! ) shoving the book in the hands of strangers and ordering them to read it. This is not that kind of book. 2. The second type of five star book is the kind that turns your face and eyes (as much as you might try to pull away) to a truth and a reality that can no longer be avoided . Over the many months following 9/11, journalist Dean Murphy collected first hand accounts of witnesses and survivors. Oddly enough, with a few exceptions of rescue personnel operating in the plaza, there is little gore or panic in the accounts. The book is not maudlin. It is somber, sobering, grave. It is real, true - the experiences of real people recounting in a simple way the most life-threatening moment they will ever experience, until they experience death itself. Because the stories are told by survivors, every story has a " happy" ending. Families are reunited, life somehow moves on, but there is always the knowledge that things will never be the same. I have read many books about 9/11; I was chained to the tv when it occurred, but this book, due to the integrity of the witnesses and Murphy, is one of the best.
I am very picky about giving five stars. Four stars to me is very nearly perfect. There isn't a lot of reason to give more. I make an exception in two cases: 1. If a book is so extraordinary and brilliantly written that it makes me manic with its artistry to the point of nearly running down the street (and I'm in a wheelchair! ) shoving the book in the hands of strangers and ordering them to read it. This is not that kind of book. 2. The second type of five star book is the kind that turns your face and eyes (as much as you might try to pull away) to a truth and a reality that can no longer be avoided . Over the many months following 9/11, journalist Dean Murphy collected first hand accounts of witnesses and survivors. Oddly enough, with a few exceptions of rescue personnel operating in the plaza, there is little gore or panic in the accounts. The book is not maudlin. It is somber, sobering, grave. It is real, true - the experiences of real people recounting in a simple way the most life-threatening moment they will ever experience, until they experience death itself. Because the stories are told by survivors, every story has a " happy" ending. Families are reunited, life somehow moves on, but there is always the knowledge that things will never be the same. I have read many books about 9/11; I was chained to the tv when it occurred, but this book, due to the integrity of the witnesses and Murphy, is one of the best.
July 7, 2023
Pretty much as grim as expected. Full disclosure, I read this because it contains the black tag lady story (I do not recommend googling that one) and other first-hand accounts from people who were in or near the towers when the planes hit, so very personal and pretty stomach-turning on some of the details. I feel like so much of the 9/11 attacks has been weirdly mythologised, sanitised, and squashed into safely consumable content in the twenty years since; as this book was published in 2002, all these voices are pretty damn immediate and there is no polish to their stories, just the raw human experience. Is it ghoulish to zoom in on that, probably. Do I find it more authentic than the umpteenth documentary that feels compelled to give a voice to conspiracy theorists, hell yes.
January 15, 2023
This is a collection of oral histories/narratives from people who lived through the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Some of the accounts were from people who were in the buildings at the time the planes hit, and others were by people who were nearby and caught up in the aftermath, or were first responders. Most of the stories in the book come from people who were in New York, either working in or doing something around the World Trade Center. Of the 247 pages of the book, about 200 of them are devoted to stories from people who were in NY. The last handful of stories are from people who were in the Pentagon when it was hit and their experience trying to get out or trying to get people to safety.
April 19, 2022
The title says it all
This book, published shortly after the horrible events of 9/11, consists of a number of concise, riveting personal memoirs. Included are entries from some who escaped from the burning and fatally wounded towers, police, medical and fire responders. There is also a section of observations from survivors of the Pentagon attack. Each interview is absorbing, packed with amazing detail and oftentimes very moving. They are fairly brief and presented in a compelling first person narrative form instead of Q and A, Studs Terkel style conversations.
This book, published shortly after the horrible events of 9/11, consists of a number of concise, riveting personal memoirs. Included are entries from some who escaped from the burning and fatally wounded towers, police, medical and fire responders. There is also a section of observations from survivors of the Pentagon attack. Each interview is absorbing, packed with amazing detail and oftentimes very moving. They are fairly brief and presented in a compelling first person narrative form instead of Q and A, Studs Terkel style conversations.
January 7, 2023
A must read
Obviously this book comes with a lot of content warnings. There are a lot of ugly things in this book, but there are a lot of beautiful things too. You can’t really even start to understand what happened that day if you don’t know what it felt like to live through it. The stories of the survivors are the only way to begin to understand. And I think the more we understand the less likely it is to happen again. It’s through clutching that talisman that I came to this book. And now I’ve finished I’m even more convinced of its importance. Read this book.
Obviously this book comes with a lot of content warnings. There are a lot of ugly things in this book, but there are a lot of beautiful things too. You can’t really even start to understand what happened that day if you don’t know what it felt like to live through it. The stories of the survivors are the only way to begin to understand. And I think the more we understand the less likely it is to happen again. It’s through clutching that talisman that I came to this book. And now I’ve finished I’m even more convinced of its importance. Read this book.
November 9, 2023
The day was such a worry filled day for me, having had family there when the towers fell, that when every year on the anniversary of it the replays of the news castings always irritate me.
Reading this put into light that as tragic as that day was these people and many others risked to help others. The testimonies were beautifully tragic. In the mist of this Tragedy it didn’t matter background, color, they all helped for the common reason for it being the right thing to do. We unity because we all hurt for the same reason… these were the stories of it.
Reading this put into light that as tragic as that day was these people and many others risked to help others. The testimonies were beautifully tragic. In the mist of this Tragedy it didn’t matter background, color, they all helped for the common reason for it being the right thing to do. We unity because we all hurt for the same reason… these were the stories of it.
September 11, 2018
This was good an another account of what was going on that day and prior with state elections as a focus. I like that it also included the events at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania; but the attacks at the WTC were still the main focus. I liked it had a timeline of the entire events of that day.
Still not as good as 102 minutes where it was so damn chilling and really effected and made me feel like I was there; a good detailed summary.
Still not as good as 102 minutes where it was so damn chilling and really effected and made me feel like I was there; a good detailed summary.
February 19, 2021
Stunning
I truly was stunned by this book. The story of Brian and Stanley really anchord into my mind due to my own personal religious beliefs but in reality ALL of the stories were compelling. From the recollections of those in the towers (and pentagon) when the planes hit, to those who where at ground zero when they fell, and the first responders, nothing but sheer awe for those first responders both living and lost.
I truly was stunned by this book. The story of Brian and Stanley really anchord into my mind due to my own personal religious beliefs but in reality ALL of the stories were compelling. From the recollections of those in the towers (and pentagon) when the planes hit, to those who where at ground zero when they fell, and the first responders, nothing but sheer awe for those first responders both living and lost.
September 11, 2024
A beautifully tragic book about a day that forever changed the U.S., and dare I say it, the rest of the world. Through so many different stories, it amazed me how many people's relatively mundane decisions that fateful morning literally meant life or death. I hope we never repeat an event like this, but I hope we can rediscover some of the unity that followed. This was an honor to read so close to another 9/11 anniversary.
April 4, 2019
This is one of those things I feel compelled to read even though I know it will disturb me greatly and it will plant new awful scenarios in my brain that I can't get rid of and it did both. The book itself is just 5-10 page first person narratives of a variety of people who were there or near there, plus a section about the Pentagon.
November 9, 2020
Another survivor died yesterday. Richard Brown had brain cancer caused by exposure from debris.
He was a wonderful man and he and his wife Kathy raised four boys together. Rest in peace Rich and peace and strength to Kathy and their sons.
He was a wonderful man and he and his wife Kathy raised four boys together. Rest in peace Rich and peace and strength to Kathy and their sons.
September 27, 2021
Interesting book, though it went a bit too rah-rah by the end. It suffers a bit from being too close to the day (published in 2002 if I'm not mistaken), although at the same time some of the testimonies feel very raw.
Read
March 1, 2024A difficult, intense read but so good. The first-hand accounts of 41 survivors of the North Tower, the South Tower, businesses and schools within blocks of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the first responders who came to the rescue.
July 29, 2025
Unique compilation of, at the time of publication, very recent stories of 9/11. Source of the disputed „black tag lady” tale. True or not, it conveys the horror of the day perfectly. The book is primarily focused on experiences of people at Twin Towers - no plane hijackin or air force one boredom.
May 2, 2019
4.5 Stars. We visited the 9/11 museum and it was interesting to read this and being able to picture the streets.
There are 40 stories from survivors’ accounts told in their words.
There are 40 stories from survivors’ accounts told in their words.
September 21, 2021
Very moving
October 10, 2022
Another excellent account of the stories of 9/11 survivors. Highly recommend.
July 7, 2023
I think this is one of the best sources of first hand accounts of the darkest day in America.
October 9, 2023
A grim, often devastating tale of destruction and survival told from many different points of view. It really brings that day back.
July 2, 2024
Probably the best book about 9/11. This book made me shed a tear more then once.
5/5.
5/5.
November 24, 2024
Firsthand accounts from 9/11 are always going to be 5 stars
October 31, 2015
This was really powerful. Before this, I'd read two others from the catastrophe-told-by-witnesses genre, Underground by Haruki Murakami, and Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich. Writing-wise, I'd have to rank Underground highest, because it included analysis by the author as well. But this one hit so close to home, I think in part because I was 11 when 9/11 happened, and I've never really felt a personal connection until reading these stories. Highly recommended if you feel disconnected from this event in our history, or if you just need to process what you know about it further. This isn't a factual presentation, it's more of an emotional presentation, but it's really powerful.
April 13, 2015
While I found this book to be a very intimate and extremely raw account of what happened in New York City on September 11, I had to give it three stars because, in my opinion, failed to properly address the other events that occurred on that day. There is a small segment at the very end of the book about the attack on the Pentagon, and the events that took place in Pennsylvania aren't addressed at all. There is absolutely nothing said about Flight 93. In my opinion, this was a huge flaw in the writing/compiling of this book. If you are going to do an oral history on an event such as September 11, I feel you need to address all crash sites equally.
If you want a book that focuses primarily on NYC, then this is your book. However, if you want a complete oral history, I would suggest looking elsewhere. As stated before, it's well-written, but fundamentally lacking in some key areas, and that's why I gave it three stars as opposed to four.
If you want a book that focuses primarily on NYC, then this is your book. However, if you want a complete oral history, I would suggest looking elsewhere. As stated before, it's well-written, but fundamentally lacking in some key areas, and that's why I gave it three stars as opposed to four.
November 30, 2014
Even over nine years after 9/11, this book was emotionally draining to read. We read about people who made it down 60-70 flights of stairs, one man who narrowly averted disaster by forgetting to set his coffee maker the night before, and most disturbingly, one rescue worker who had a conversation with a person, who by some quirk of nature such as an air draft, survived the 1,000 foot fall even though only her head, shoulder, and one lung were left undamaged. We also read about people's experiences at the Pentagon. This book, while extremely sad, gives readers an insight into what experiencing Sept. 11 up close was like.
August 8, 2012
A series of first-person accounts from survivors of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, where the reader finds out that life or death are sometime determined by small details, such making the random choice to go through one particular door or down a particular staircase, or just being late to work by a couple of minutes.
May 13, 2013
This book is a collection of eyewitness accounts of 9/11, organized by the location of the person on that day. Truly amazing!
Common Core Standard: Analyze how individuals, ideas, and events affect complex events and sequences in informational text. Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem and the source text.
Common Core Standard: Analyze how individuals, ideas, and events affect complex events and sequences in informational text. Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem and the source text.
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