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The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the
World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute
counted.
At 8:46 am on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin
towers-reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the
World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for
the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it-until now.
Of the millions of words written about this wrenching day, most were
told from the outside looking in. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and
Kevin Flynn have taken the opposite-and far more revealing-approach.
Reported from the perspectives of those inside the towers, 102 Minutes
captures the little-known stories of ordinary people who took
extraordinary steps to save themselves and others. Beyond this stirring
panorama stands investigative reporting of the first rank. An astounding
number of people actually survived the plane impacts but were unable to
escape, and the authors raise hard questions about building safety and
tragic flaws in New York's emergency preparedness.
Dwyer and Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews with rescuers, thousands
of pages of oral histories, and countless phone, e-mail, and emergency
radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the
infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the
affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women-the nearly 12,000 who
escaped and the 2,749 who perished-as they made 102 minutes count as never
before. |
