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Drawn from thousands of radio transcripts, phone messages, e-mails and
interviews with eyewitnesses, this 9/11 account comes from the perspective
of those inside the World Trade Center from the moment the first plane hit
at 8:46 a.m. to the collapse of the north tower at 10:28 a.m.
The stories are intensely intimate, and they often stir gut-wrenching
emotions. A law firm receptionist quietly eats yogurt at her desk seconds
before impact. Injured survivors, sidestepping debris and bodies, struggle
down a stairwell. A man trapped on the 88th floor leaves a phone message
for his fiancée: "Kris, there's been an explosion.... I want you to know
my life has been so much better and richer because you were in it."
Dwyer and Flynn, New York Times writers, take rescue agencies to task
for rampant communications glitches and argue that the towers' faulty
design helped doom those above the affected floors ("Their fate had been
sealed nearly four decades earlier, when... fire stairs were eliminated as
a wasteful use of valuable space"). In doing so, the authors frequently
draw parallels to similar safety oversights aboard the ill-fated Titanic
nearly 90 years before. Their reporting skills are exceptional; readers
experience the chaos and confusion that unfolded inside, in grim,
painstaking detail.
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