In the first hours after the PW staff watched, from our 17th Street office windows, the World Trade Center disappear before our very eyes, everything but that event seemed trivial. Slowly, we began to realize that, in the midst of the larger story, there were many smaller, individual, often private but no less important ones that touched our industry. Did the Borders employees get out in time? (Yes.) Was the Strand Annex affected? (Yes, and the employees, though traumatized, were okay.) What was the fate of the many small publishers down in the area? (All were safe, but unable to get to their offices.) Was anyone from publishing lost? (Yes, sadly, Doug Stone of Odyssey Press was a passenger on American flight 11.)

While the national news media unapologetically turned its attention to how the disaster might affect the stock market, we still found it a little difficult to go from the well-being of colleagues in publishing and bookselling to the seemingly colder assessment of how the business of the fall season would be affected. Some publishers expressed a sense of queasiness about printing more copies of books on terrorism to meet the sudden demand. Others began looking for reasons not to go to Frankfurt.

Yet we have much evidence that the rest of the world still feels that books matter. It's hard to imagine that New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had time to read last week, but even he mentioned that he has been reading Five Days in London, May 1940 by John Lukacs (Yale Univ. Press, 1999), "whenever I get the chance." On NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon read four poems to try to make sense of what had happened. And on Tuesday, riding the subway to work, I watched a woman shake with helpless, healing laughter as she read Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.

In this special news section, we look at the many ways in which publishing has been changed by the events of September 11. Books do matter-- someday a future mayor in crisis will turn to an account of how Giuliani handled this one; poems published today will help future generations try to grapple with new forms of evil; and humor will help ease someone's path back to everyday life. And an American presence at Frankfurt is important to demonstrate our belief that publishing serves to help people around the world understand themselves and each other. My own plans, in a bow to cost-cutting, had been to not go this year. The events of last week have changed my mind.