Undaunted is a book that was written in the lead-up to the 20th Anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. It tells the story of a company called Baseline Financial, which had offices on the 77th and 78th floors of the South Tower of the World Trade Center (floor 78 was the lowest floor in the impact zone when Flight 175 hit the building). Some of the employees of the company were featured in the History Channel documentary, Escape from the Towers, which was also put out around the 20th Anniversary, so if you watched that documentary, you are already aware of some of what the book covers.
The book is written by the former head of sales for Baseline, Ed Zier, who was not actually in the building on 9/11. He was on his way to work when the first plane hit the North Tower and could not get to the buildings, so he watched most of what played out from a Taxi going back to New Jersey. The book partly lays out the history of the company, from its beginnings as a start-up that made no money, to being a powerhouse that was making millions of dollars when the 9/11 attacks occurred. He shifts back and forth between the story of the company with the events of 9/11, with the most detail about the people who made it down (including one worker who was 7 months pregnant and walked down 77 flights of stairs without stopping or resting because she was worried about the health of her baby), including what they faced at the moment of impact, trying to find a way out, and what happened when they got out of the building, including as it collapsed. After that, Zein details the four members of the company who died in the attacks (who were all on the 78th floor exactly where the plane hit) and what happened to the company after 9/11 as it tried to rebuild.
The substantive portion of the book is about 245 pages, and then there are several pages of notes and an index. The parts of the book about the experience of the people in the building (who are counted among the 18 people at or above the point of impact who made it out of the building, although technically they were all just below the impact floors) are harrowing. Those chapters detail how many employees seeing people jump from the North Tower wanted to get out (despite the announcement saying the building was secure and they could stay at their desks), and were debating about whether to take the stairs or try the elevators. A few of the employees had been on the 78th floor a couple of minutes before the plane hit the building, and only survived because of a decision to go back down to the 77th floor. Another employee was going back to her desk (which was on the side of the building where the plane hit) to get her shoes, and saw the plane coming as she was walking that way, convinced that if she had been at her desk she would have been killed. Then the author goes into the rush to find a way out, with the employees eventually risking going down the risky A stairwell (which was filled with smoke) after determining that the B and C stairwells were inaccessible or completely destroyed).
Toward the end of the book, the author details the efforts to rebuild the company, which was complicated not only by the loss of their offices in the trade center, but that it had recently been acquired by what is now Thomson Reuters, and how a decision by one of the employees to grab his laptop (and the fact that he and it survived the aftermath of the towers collapsing) basically saved the company's data and allowed the employees to keep it running. At the very end of the book, there are good eulogies written about the four employees who were killed in the attacks.
Overall, the book is very good and very interesting. I think most people will be interested in the chapters devoted to the day of 9/11, but the chapters devoted to the history of the company and what happened to it in the years after 9/11 are also very interesting, even if you are not all that familiar with, or into finance. It is definitely worth reading.
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