One of the definitions the Random House Webster's College Dictionary gives for hero is "(in antiquity) an individual possessing godlike prowess and beneficence, who often came to be honored as a divinity." The word hero has been tossed around casually and carelessly since the horrific events of September 11, cheapening it, but to New Yorkers and the world, if ever there were heroes possessing godlike prowess, beneficence and divinity, it is the firefighters of the FDNY. As others fled the doomed burning towers, they selflessly went in to rescue the incapacitated, the disabled who could not escape without elevators, the terrified. A job not many would brave, but expected of the FDNY because of its history.

And a man with a sense of history—be it of wild Irish Fenian revolutionaries, near-deities like the late John Cardinal O'Connor, or the men and women of the FDNY—is Terry Golway. Golway hooked up with PW's correspondent at the cholesterol palace called the Palm Restaurant on New York's Second Avenue to discuss his new book on the FDNY, So Others Might Live (Basic Books). Passing beneath the painted 1940 caricature of a very dour J. Edgar Hoover, we headed for the back room for some serious artery-hardening grub and talk about Golway's secret to writing history on the run.

The biggest puzzle surrounding Golway is how he avoided becoming a fireman himself. He freely admits that he grew up "in a civil service ghetto on Staten Island" in a family of firemen. "My father's a fireman," begins Golway, almost imitating the rapid-fire cadence James Cagney, playing George M. Cohan, made famous in Yankee Doodle Dandy when he discussed his family, "my father-in-law's a fireman, retired. My godfather was a fireman. I have a couple of cousins who were firemen and a couple of my wife's cousins are firemen, so because of that most of my father's friends were firemen. I remember being astonished, maybe I was 11 or 12, to run into a kid on the street whose father worked in a factory. You mean, he's not a cop or a fireman?!"

But a career in fire fighting was not in the cards for Golway. He worked his way through Seton Hall University in New Jersey by writing sports for the Staten Island Advance. After a stint as a teacher at a Catholic grammar school, Golway went to work full-time at the Advance, then switched to politics when he became the press secretary to former Staten Island congressman Guy Molinari. "I worked for Molinari for six months in '83," Golway says, "and it was the worst six months of my life because I hated Washington." He returned to New York and the weekly New York Observer, where he now serves as columnist and city editor.

Golway is known in the publishing business as a historian with a bent for things Irish. Each of his five books, including So Others Might Live, has an Irish theme. His first book, Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Ireland's Freedom, a biography of the incorrigible New York—based Irish Fenian who bankrolled Michael Collins's revolution and the new Irish state, came about in a serendipitous way. "The Devoy book was not my idea," recalls Golway. "It was suggested to me by Angela Carter, who used to run Irish Books, and before that, Keshkerrigan Books. I was talking with her at a ceremony on Ellis Island in 1993—[Irish President] Mary Robinson gave a speech to commemorate the statue of Annie Moore, the Irish girl who was the first immigrant to disembark on Ellis Island. Angela asked me if I was working on any projects. I said no. She looked at me and said: 'John Devoy.' And I knew right away that it was a great story—a guy born before the [Irish] famine, who lives to see the Free State—and a newspaper man, too! Selling a bio of an obscure Irish rebel wasn't easy, but I credit my agent, John Wright, with persuading Diane Higgins of St. Martin's to do it. I wonder: Would such a book get published today?"

John Wright, who Golway describes as "one of my best friends," has been instrumental in selling all of Golway's titles. Golway can write fast. His collaboration on The Irish in America (Hyperion) took seven months from project conception to manuscript completion. For the Cause of Liberty (S&S) took two years between contract and delivery; Full of Grace (Pocket), his oral biography of Cardinal O'Connor, was put together in four months, and So Others Might Live was completed in just nine months. What's Golway's secret? "Part of it," says Golway, "is figuring out in my head what the story line is—and sticking to it—and trying not to get distracted on what might wind up as side issues." Being a newspaperman doesn't hurt, either. "It really comes down to my newspaper background—I gotta get it done. I have no choice. I have to get it done and if it gets too complicated, then maybe I have to find some other way of doing it."

With the amount of FDNY blood flowing through Golway's veins, it is not surprising that the urge to write a history of the FDNY had been buzzing in the back of his mind for some time. "I had tinkered with the book idea before 9/11," Golway admits. "I had my father's collection of the department's magazine, and I pretty much knew the history of the FDNY in the 20th century. After 9/11, I basically said to my agent, there's a long history here. What we're seeing isn't coming out of nowhere. And I had done my research and knew there hadn't been a popular history of the department for 60 years. So John immediately realized that there was a story here and Liz McGuire of Basic Books agreed."

The thing that makes So Others Might Live so vivid is the personalities Golway uncovers. One such example is Chief John Bresnan. "I was reading about this guy John Bresnan," recalls Golway. "I think he's one of the great discoveries of the book. Think about it, here's a guy who comes to America before the potato famine and grows up in the Five Points, an area where all the elites think the people, predominantly Irish, by the way, are incorrigible, antidemocratic. He becomes a volunteer fireman because he falls in love with the idea of being a firefighter as a young boy, as many people did in that period. He joins the department when it becomes a paid department, and he goes on to be this force for social justice and progress. He's the one telling the civic elites, this is how the people live in tenement buildings, these are the risks they take, you have to do something. So he's reallly a force for social progress. He has a family, his wife dies, so he's raising the children on his own and eventually dies in a fire at the age of 54. And one of those orphan children goes on to become the chief dispatcher of the FDNY in the Bronx. Eventually, I run into this guy Bill Bresnan, who is his great-grandson and a retired firefighter. What makes Bill's story so intriguing is that he was at the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and he had this vivid story of watching the World Trade Center burn and thinking of his great-grandfather, John Bresnan, who died in a building collapse."

And, of course, there is an Irish theme to So Others Might Live. Golway reminds his readers that of the 343 firefighters who were killed on September 11, 42% of them belonged to the Emerald Society, the association made up strictly of firemen of Irish descent. In the beginning, to the Irish, the FDNY was about that most precious commodity—a job. "Once it becomes a paid department, all of a sudden you're getting the security of the job. For the Irish it meant everything and to an extent it still does. The fire department had a culture that the Catholic Irish could respect and understand. Even from way back. And it was also very—I don't want to use the word clannish because that has a bad connotation—but it was very insulated. It's us against them."

Even in this day and age, the Irish continue to flock, son after father, to the FDNY. "It just tells you, in some ways, for all the celebrations of the 'new Irish' "—Golway laughs as he mentions Scott D. Sullivan, WorldCom's former CFO who's just been hauled off to the calaboose in the government bracelets—"there still is this unbelievable Irish presence in the fire department, which is very admirable, because at this point in the Irish experience these are guys who do have options. They love fire fighting. It is in their blood. So they join the Emerald Society, which means they also take pride in their heritage, too, so 9/11 really was an Irish-American tragedy."

But for all his admiration of the FDNY, Golway doesn't give them a free ride. One of the biggest stains on the department was how the rank and file treated black and female recruits and the infamous five-and-a-half-hour strike of 1973. "The fact is that like any other institution or any other people," Golway says with vehemence, "the fire department and firefighters are not without flaws and not without elements of their history that are not heroic and, as a matter of fact, are disgraceful. I'm not writing the authorized history of the fire department, I'm writing it from a historian's perspective. Issues of race and gender are one of the big issues in the department since World War II. The strike was horrendous."

Golway pulls no punches, either, as he describes what the legendary Julius brothers, two of the first blacks in the department, went through. There are the horrific tales of the "black bed" in the firehouse—a bed reserved for blacks and only for blacks, which no white fireman would sleep in, ever. Women firefighters were treated much the same way as the blacks when they started joining the department in the 1980s, only this time the insinuations were not about race but lewd sexual innuendo. In fact, one of the great scenes in the book is when Reggie Julius, then chief of Battalion 12, came to the rescue of a woman under constant siege by male firefighters. "I'm gonna tell you motherfuckers something," Julius began. "You guys are screwing with this woman. The law says she's allowed to be here... and if you keep screwing with her, I'll transfer every one of you." End of sexual harassment.

"One of the great redemptions in the book," says Golway, "is that you read about the way the Julius brothers were treated in the early '50s, where they have to fight their way for acceptance, but they became part of the team and went on to lead—one went on to become a battalion chief and the other became a captain. The women have a hard time, but times change and attitudes change. By 2002, one of those abused '80s recruits, Brenda Berkman, is becoming a captain. And they are there at the end because they eventually find success and acceptance."

So Others Might Live ends with the stories of those firefighters who survived September 11. "That was one of the easier chapters to write because it was so fresh, and because I was lucky enough that I found a guy, Bob Bohack, who had an unbelievable story to tell. He was candid enough to admit that he let this one guy go ahead of him [in the World Trade Center], and he died. But as a lieutenant he had the power to say, 'We're staying together.' He was very detached. I expected it to be a little more emotional for him. But these guys can't afford that luxury. They have to put out a fire tomorrow."

Now, as the politicians gather and munificently dictate just how the survivors and other New Yorkers should remember their dead on the first anniversary, a bit of the Fenian fighting spirit arises in Golway. "The idea that there will be no original speeches at the 9/11 ceremony horrifies me," he states stridently. "Surely our leaders have something original to say about an event that has no precedent in American history. I'm sorry—the Gettysburg Address, however poetic, doesn't apply to 9/11. Nor does any other speech from the American canon. If the politicians have nothing to say, they should say nothing. They should let the brave survivors speak; you can be sure they will have something moving, emotional and inspiring to offer us."