Veteran Times
reporter and book critic Bernstein has drawn on the newspaper's staff reporting of the terrible events of September 11 to create an account that stands out for its poignancy and humanity. Focusing on the personal—the victims, the perpetrators and heroes whose lives became tangled in catastrophe—the book goes behind the scenes to explore the ways in which so many lives were irrevocably changed. The personal vignettes are emotional without being maudlin, informative without being polemical. We get, for instance, the stunning moment, described with admirable understatement, when Joe Disorbo at the World Trade Center, who "had been too busy surviving to contemplate the scope of the disaster... realized that he was staring into a dusty vacant sky. 'Where's the building?' he asked, not quite believing the evidence of his eyes." But the book doesn't stop at the personal. It uses these stories as a jumping-off point for a comprehensive look at the terror attacks—the reactions of New Yorkers, the nation and the world; the criticism of U.S. government agencies; the lingering effects of the tragedy. While some of this information has been published elsewhere, it has not been gathered so comprehensively—nor has it been written so well. This powerful account deserves to be a bestseller. (Sept. 11)
