Book Review: We're Not Leaving: 9/11 Responders Tell Their Stories of Courage, Sacrifice, and Renewal

 

We're Not Leaving is a book about the responders of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, published in 2011 in conjunction with the tenth anniversary of the attacks. It is a collection of oral histories in which the author, Benjamin Luft, presents edited versions of the experiences of people who responded to the towers being hit by the planes and those who participated in the rescue and recovery/cleanup operation afterward. 

The softcover version of the book is just under 300 pages. Once you start, it is both hard to read and hard to put down. It is one of the most harrowing and emotional books about 9/11 that I have read. The emotion that the people being interviewed conveyed was palpable, and for many, it had not faded even after nearly a decade. The book is solely devoted to the responders in New York. It does not include interviews with responders at The Pentagon or in Shanksville, PA. Ultimately, it is a must-read book that conveys the horrors and the heroism of 9/11 and the days and months after as the city tried to recover from the attack and the devastation that resulted from it.  

Book Review: Debunking 9/11 Myths

 

Debunking 9/11 Myths is a 2006 book by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan. It is a longer version of an article in Popular Mechanics that set out to debunk some of the larger 9/11 conspiracies that surfaced after that day. The chapters focus on the planes that hit the buildings, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 and are then broken down into sub-elements within the chapters. The book essentially does a point-counterpoint, setting up a particular hypothesis and then presenting the counterpoint. The length of discussion that any point gets really varies, with some getting much more discussion than others. The book also features an introduction by the late Senator John McCain. 

The paperback version of the book is relatively short, at just under 200 pages. The main text is a pretty quick read, but if you want to correlate the text to the material in the source notes, it can take quite a bit longer to read. I think the book would have been better off using footnotes at the end of sentences or paragraphs in the text, pointing out distinctly what the sources on each side were and where to find them. The book does, in the text itself, do some of that, but it is not extensive, and the notes at the end of the book are tied to the particular chapters and do not point to specific wording within the chapter (i.e., they are not actual endnotes). That would have helped people wanting to do deeper research based on the material in the book.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: The Looming Tower

 

The Looming Tower is a 10-episode miniseries that was released on Hulu in 2018. It stars Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt, Bill Camp, Louis Cancelmi, Ella Rae Peck, and Peter Sarsgaard. There are a couple of things to note when it comes to this series. First, while it is based on the book of the same name by Lawrence Wright, its focus is very different. In the book, the focus was mainly on the rise of Al-Qaeda from its beginnings during and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to just after the 9-11 attacks. The focus of the series, which was a smaller part of the book, is the tension between the CIA and FBI, centered around the characters of John O'Neil and Ali Soufan. It really displayed how the CIA saw its mission as intelligence gathering, and because the FBI was interested in making arrests, the CIA would stonewall the FBI agents working on bringing Al-Qaeda down. It also dealt with some of the politics playing out in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Clinton's affair and impeachment, and the Bush Administration's obsession with taking out Sadaam Hussein in Iraq and indifference to the Al-Qaeda threat), which prevented any real action against Al-Qaeda being taken until it was too late.

Second, it is a fictionalized docu-drama. It is not a straight-up documentary retelling everything that happened exactly as it did. It does mix in a lot of real-life news footage of events that the series depicts and footage from the congressional hearings that were held a few years after the attacks. Some characters were a combination of real-life people or a fictionalized version of real people (like the Schmidt character (played by Peter Sarsgaard), who was based on a pretty crazy real-life CIA agent at Alec Station), and some events were changed a bit (such as the bombing of the USS Cole). So, if you are looking for something that gives a straight-up retelling, then this is not it. Nor does it put a ton of emphasis on 9-11 itself. The attacks and aftermath mainly play out on monitors playing real-life footage in the background in the final episode. There was very little that the show filmed depicting things that happened on the actual day itself. What was filmed were things like Richard Clarke in the White House as it was being evacuated, and later in the bunker, one of the FBI agents walking through the streets after the collapse of the towers, etc. A big chunk of the last episode involves Ali Soufan finally getting access to interrogate Bin-Laden's former bodyguard who was being detained in Yemen and distills what was an interrogation over several days into a 10-or-so-minute sequence.

The acting and writing of the show are very good. Jeff Daniels really shines as John O'Neil, and for all but one episode is pretty much the main character. Tahir Rahim also does a great job playing Ali Soufan, who was part of a group of FBI agents butting heads with the CIA to get information. Some of the real-life players were also consultants and/or producers of the show, which I think helped its authenticity. For extras, there are commentary tracks on the first and last episodes by the writer and director of the episodes, and then about 40 minutes worth of behind-the-scenes, making of, and source material featurettes. Very good for what was included. It also looks great on blu-ray.

It does have some flaws, but overall, they are, in my opinion, minor in the larger overall context. It is definitely worth checking out.

Book Review: Reluctant Hero

 

Reluctant Hero is a book from 2011 written by Mike Benfonte about his experience during and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Benfonte worked for a telecommunications company on the 81st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center (just 12 floors below the lowest point impacted by Flight 11 when it hit the building). Benfonte managed to get all his employees to the stairwell (which was luckily not blocked or inaccessible) and heading down. On the 68th floor, he and another employee discovered a woman in a motorized wheelchair who needed help. They put her in an evacuation chair and carried her down the rest of the way. Once outside, they got her to an ambulance but did not get in and ride with her when offered the chance. They were in awe, trying to take everything in and find out what happened (the South Tower had already collapsed), and people were still jumping from the North Tower). As they were walking north, the tower collapsed, resulting in a chilling piece of video footage of Benfonte running past a cameraman as the cloud of debris roared behind him. Benfonte survived, but his life took many unexpected turns post-9/11, which he details in the book.

The hardcover version of the book is just over 230 pages long. In it, he details where his life was at before and leading up to 9/11, the events of the day, and what he dealt with in the aftermath, including struggling with survivor guilt, post-traumatic stress, and the neverending requests for interviews and media appearances.  The book can be harrowing and hard to read, yet at the same time inspirational and uplifting. Benfonte is very open about his struggles with anger and sadness in the years after 9/11, how that affected his life, and what he did to overcome them. It is absolutely worth reading.

Book Review: The Looming Tower

 

The Looming Tower is a book that was written by Lawrence Wright and initially published in 2006. The book serves as the source material for the series on Hulu of the same name. If you have seen the Hulu series you know that its focus was on the FBI and CIA infighting, lack of information sharing, and was largely set around John O'Neil and Ali Soufan. The book, on the other hand, focuses mainly on the rise of radical Islam and tells the story of how the various splintered groups eventually came together to form what would be Al-Qaeda. The first 200 pages or so are devoted solely to the history of the major events and players in that world and laid out how Osama bin Laden came to power and basically lost his fortune (he was nowhere near as wealthy as he was made out to be), and then managed to cobble together the force that would eventually attack the United States. Later in the book, much of what the focus of the Hulu series plays out, including a lot of detail about what the CIA and FBI did and did not know, how if they actually worked together instead of against each other, the 9-11 attacks could have very likely been averted.

The main part of the softcover version of the book is just over 400 pages. Then there is a glossary giving the backgrounds and current status of the major people mentioned throughout the book and endnotes that flesh out the details in the book. The only picky point on the notes is that they are not actually referenced in the book's text, so there is no way to easily match up the note with the part of the text it is referencing (for the handful of people who would care to do so). As was the case with the series, the book does not focus much on the events of 9-11 itself. While the book includes some detail about what was happening in and around the towers, that was relegated to just a part of the last chapter. The book finishes with the interrogation of Abu Jandal by Ali Soufan, which is pretty much the climax of the series. Overall, the book gives a good description of the backstory of what led up to the attacks and the reasoning and justifications the terrorists used for launching suicide attacks against innocent civilians. It also does a very good job of detailing some of the dysfunction of the government agencies that failed to put together pieces and tied threads that could have stopped the attacks from happening. It is definitely worth the read.

Book Review: Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror

 

Against All Enemies, first published in 2004, is a book written by the former US head of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke. Clarke held several government positions for 30+ years through several administrations, but it is his position as the head of counterterrorism for both the Clinton and Bush administrations that he is best known for. The book is not focused primarily on the events of September 11, 2001, itself. The very beginning of the book is devoted to that day and a few days afterward. The focus of the book is the lead-up to 9-11 and how the country's view of terrorism changed from the Regan administration up to George W. Bush's administration, and then what Clarke describes as the major screw-up by the Bush Administration following 9-11. Specifically, the invasion of Iraq.

One of the things that struck me the most about the book is how ill-prepared the intelligence agencies were for Al-Qaeda. For a long time, even when they were actively attacking US interests many in the FBI had no idea they existed or that there were sleeper cells in the United States. One very telling point was when Clarke asked the FBI to research whether there were websites hosted on US servers that were recruiting terrorists, and he was told there were none, and then asked a reporter to look into it who found dozens of them. Just the fact that there were very few within the FBI, CIA, and other agencies who realized the kind of threat they posed, combined with the agencies' unwillingness to share information with each other, and the Clinton and Bush administration very different lack of responses (Bush's downplaying the threat and brushing it aside, and Clinton's overanalyzing combined with his lack of action due to "Wag the Dog" like comparisons to deflect from his personal scandals) left the country open to attack.

Clarke's harshest criticism is saved for the Bush Administration's obsession with going into Iraq. He claims that from almost day one of that administration they were itching to find a reason to go invade Iraq to "finish the job" from the first Iraq war, and that even a couple days after 9-11 they were trying to find any connection between Iraq and Al-Quaeda despite it being clear that there was no connection between the two. He also argued that by invading Iraq the United States gave Bin Laden exactly what he wanted, the US occupying a Muslim country, which could be used as a terrorist recruiting tool. In the final chapter of the book Clarke lays out what he thought the proper response to 9-11 should have been, vs what was actually done.

The softcover version of the book is about 330 pages long. For me, it read fairly quickly, but I was already aware of a lot of the information discussed by Clarke. Overall, the book is a very interesting read. It does not come across as partisan in that Clarke criticizes and praises things that were done right and wrong by Republicans and Democrats, as well as the career professionals in the various intelligence agencies. While not likely an exhaustive history, it lays out how the United States viewed, and responded to, terrorism, including how the US learned of Bin Laden and his group's existence and motives over a long period of time. Given the age of the book, if you are into the subject at all and have watched any of the documentaries that are out there, read any of the other books, or even have seen the series The Looming Tower, which is currently playing on Hulu, you may know a lot of what is in this book. But it gives a very good and insightful look at what was going on from an insider's perspective. It is definitely worth reading.

Book Review: The Red Bandanna: A Life. A Choice. A Legacy.

 

The Red Bandana is a biography of Wells Crowther, one of the heroes of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Wells worked as an equities trader for Sandler O'Neil on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center South Tower. He was at his desk when Flight 175 hit the building and managed to find the one staircase that survived the crash. Even though he worked in finance, he dreamed of being a firefighter. He had been a volunteer firefighter in his hometown and had filled out an FDNY application shortly before 9/11. Therefore, instead of getting out of the building, he stayed and helped people who were injured, many of whom were on the 78th-floor skylobby, where the wing of the plane made a direct hit. He wore a red bandana around his face, a fact that some of the people he helped to safety distinctly remembered, and ultimately helped his parents find out what happened to him. 

The hardcover version of the book is just over 200 pages. It is both hard to read and impossible to put down. Author Tom Rinaldi interviewed many people from Wells' life, detailing what he was like growing up and piecing together the events of his final hour. Wells was ultimately killed when the South Tower collapsed, having made it down to the lobby just steps away from safety. He was found with a group of firefighters at the command post in the lobby, indicating that he was very likely still trying to help when the building collapsed. It is estimated that he helped about 12 of the 17 people who were at or above the impact zone in the South Tower get to safety. Because of his heroism, he was posthumously made a member of the FDNY after 9/11, and his story was told in an ESPN story and a longer documentary called The Man in the Red Bandana. The book is very sad yet very inspiring and uplifting. It is absolutely one of my must-reads.

Book Review: miracles & fate on 78

 

Miracles and Fate on 78 is a book written by Ari Schonbrun around the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The author worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the upper floors of the north tower of the World Trade Center. Had he been at his desk, he would have been trapped above the impassable impact zone, but due to a couple of delays, he was on the 78th floor below the impact zone and was one of a few Cantor employees who were in the building when the plane hit that survived, and the only one of those few who was not injured. 

The hardcover version of the book is short, coming in at 180 pages. Schonbrun discusses his day on 9/11, from helping his son fill out a form for school, which delayed him getting to work, to his choice of elevators when he got to the building, which made him take a longer route once he got up to the 78th floor, helping an injured co-worker who was severely burned down the stairs and to the hospital, to how he ended up getting home. Then, he talks about how his life has changed in the aftermath. He does discuss his faith and how it impacted him both before and after 9/11. While that may turn some people off, I do not feel that he gets overly preachy about it. Even though the book is short, it does pack an emotional punch and is absolutely worth reading.

Book Review: Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad

 

Manhunt is a book published in 2012 and written by Peter Bergen about the effort to find and eventually kill Osama Bin Laden. Bergen is one of the few Western journalists to interview Bin Laden back in the 1990s and was in the process of writing a book about Bin Laden when the September 11th terrorist attacks occurred. This book mostly focuses on the time after 9/11 and tracks (to the best extent possible) where Bin Laden went after fleeing the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan to the raid on the compound in Abbottabad where he was holed up. Bergen does detail a little bit of his history prior to 9/11, but the focus of the book was the time period from September 2001 to May 2011.

The hardcover version of the book is about 360 total pages (260 of which are substantive text, and the last 100 pages include a bibliography, end notes, and an index). The notes mainly cite sources but occasionally flesh out the material in the text. Along with highlighting Bin Laden's movements, the book provides a lot of detail on how the US government ultimately tracked him down. Bergen interviewed multiple government sources, including sources from the CIA (some of whom were referred to using pseudonyms). Bergen also had several in-the-room sources who discussed what was happening as President Obama and the national security team were watching the feed of the raid and military sources who discussed how the raid team got in and out of Pakistan. The book is very compelling, and while most of the details in the book have been declassified and available to the public for years, it is still worth the time to read. 

Book Review: Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11

 

Watching the World Change is a book that is about the images and videos taken during and after the 9/11 attacks. The book was written by David Friend and published in 2006. The book focuses strictly on the images out of New York. In the foreword, the author says that was because he is based in New York and that is where most of the images from the day came from. The book is not an image by image analysis. In the middle of the book the author does include several pages of images that he does discuss throughout the book. But, the book really talks about the impact of the images and videos from that day and how those impacted the response of the nation to the attacks, changed media coverage, and the like.

The hardcover version of the book has just under 350 pages of substantive text and then about 60 pages of endnotes that refer to various sources, and an index. The best part of the book is when the author is telling the human stories about the people involved, including people who were killed, people who survived, and people who were left behind. The chapters in the book correspond to the dates from 9/11 through 9/17 but the author does not limit what he discusses in the chapter to what was happening on the particular date. For example, in the 9/16 chapter he starts out talking about that day and then discusses the wars that occurred months and years later. While I do think that the book would have been a little better if it included more images, included the images in the chapter text, and told the story behind a specific image right after it was shown, the book is still very good and worth the time to read.

Book Review: On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal

 

On Top of the World, published in 2003, is the story about Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond trading company that occupied floors 101-105 in the North Tower of the World Trade Center and lost nearly all of its New York-based workforce in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

The book is partly a biography of Cantor CEO Howard Litnick, who was much reviled after 9/11 as he tried to balance holding the company together with trying to help the families of the people who died. Interwoven, are harrowing accounts (as much as can be put together) of the people who were trapped in the building after Flight 11 hit as they discovered they were stuck with nowhere to go. A handful of Cantor employees were in or around the building but not yet up to the Cantor floors when the plane hit and were able to get out. All of the employees who actually made it all the way up to the Cantor floors, however, were stuck with nowhere to go. Lutnick was on his way to the Trade Center when the plane hit (saved only because he took his son to his first day of kindergarten) and managed to get to the base of the towers. He recounted to the author his horror when he realized that the plane hit near the floors Cantor occupied (where all of his employees, including his brother were) and that it was people who worked at Cantor who were some of those that were jumping. 

What may be the most harrowing account in the book of the actual day is when the author gives vague details about how the people who worked in Cantor's Los Angeles and London officers could hear what was happening on the trading floor of the New York office through an in-house communication system. The employees listening on the conference system were imploring their colleagues to get out of the building and essentially listening to them die. The author does discuss some of the communications that the trapped employees were able to make to people on the outside, but he is very respectful and does not go into any gruesome detail. The author also discusses how the lives of the surviving loved ones of the employees who died changed after the attacks.

The hardcover version of the book is just under 300 pages. Most of the book is focused on the people who worked at Cantor and the effort to rebuild the company after 9/11. The book does go into the backlash against Lutnick and the attacks against him in the media. As I mentioned above, Barbash does discuss some of what happened on 9/11 itself, but the focus of the book was on the people who were lost and the people who helped keep the company going. The book is tough to read but is absolutely worth reading.

Book Review: Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11

 

Why America Slept is a book by Gerald Posner, probably best known for his book about the JFK assassination, Case Closed. The book was published in 2003 and details the lead-up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and what was known and missed by various entities, both in the US and overseas. 

Posner, in the author's note at the beginning of the book, states that he began investigating the attacks relatively shortly after they occurred. Of course, twenty years later a lot more is publicly known than was known in 2001-2003 when he was investigating and writing this book. That said, Posner was able to uncover a lot, including material about what might have been known by the German government (where three of the pilot hijackers had been studying before they were recruited into the plot that would become 9/11) and what members of the Saudi government and/or royal family may have known. Posner also details much of the pissing contest that was going on between the CIA and the FBI not only at the time but throughout the two agencies' history, which led them to either not share information or ignore information that came from the other agency. Posner also excoriates the Clinton administration for being more concerned with public relations and looking tough than they were about actually going after Osama Bin Laden, even when they knew he was a threat, and the Bush administration for basically sitting on its hands for too long when it came to going after al-Queada. The chapter about the Saudis is particularly enlightening as it sheds some light on at least some of what is probably in the redacted portion of the 9/11 Commission Report, which many feel was redacted to protect the Saudis and our access to their oil. In the end, 

Posner argues that if the various agencies like the CIA, FBI, and INS would have worked together and not ignored red flags, if the Clinton and Bush administrations had done a better job going after al-Queada, and if local law enforcement in NY would have done a better job investigating what was essentially an al-Queada cell (although loosely affiliated) that pulled off the 1993 WTC bombing and the murder of the head of the Jewish Defense League a few years before that, 9/11 may have been prevented.

The book is relatively short, about 240 pages overall. Most fast readers can probably finish the book in a day or two (at most). The substantive portion of the book is just under 200 pages, then there are several pages of notes, a bibliography, and an index. The main text includes some footnotes that flesh out the material in the text, then there are a bunch of endnotes that mainly cite specific sources, but a few of the endnotes also provide some additional context to the main text. It is absolutely a book that I consider to be a must-read, even if you are someone who has read many of the other books and/or watched evens some of the many documentaries about 9/11.

Book Review: The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World: The Twin Towers, Windows on the World, and the Rebirth of New York

 

This is a book published in 2019 about the Windows on the World restaurant (which was actually a collection of a few different Restaurants and Bars) located at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It would, of course, be destroyed during the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the building.

The book basically tells the story of New York City and the World Trade Center from the perspective of the operation of the restaurant, and the various obstacles that had to be overcome to operate it. The book details events that occurred as the towers were being built, including a fight with the architect about whether to make the windows on the 106th and 107th floors wider so patrons would get a better view of the city, the fighting that went on between the staff members, the difficulties of getting the restaurant up and running after the 1993 bombing in a parking garage below the buildings, and the resurgence that the restaurant experienced in the late 1990s that lasted until 9/11.

The book does details some of the events of 9/11, first at the beginning, telling the story of the head chef who survived only because he decided to get his glasses fixed in the morning instead of the afternoon, so he was downstairs in the mall under the buildings when the plane hit the tower. Then, toward the end of the book, the author talks about the phone calls that the people trapped at Windows were making as conditions inside were getting worse, and how the handful of Windows employees who were below the impact zone heard pleas for help over walkie talkies, saw people waiving tablecloths out the broken windows, and saw people jumping. The final couple of chapters discuss the aftermath of 9/11 and provided an update on some of the survivors, as well as some of the family members of the people who died that day.

The book is 320 pages, but it is not what I would call a fast read, especially if you want to get all the details. I do think the author spent a bit too long discussing what was going on in the 1970s, but once you get through that part, it does start reading a bit faster. I would also not call it a book about 9/11 as there are really only two relatively short chapters devoted to that day, and one chapter devoted to what was going on at the restaurant on September 10th. Even so, it is very interesting to get some of the history about how the Trade Center came to be, the ups and down that NYC went through over the course of time, and Window's place in all of it.

Book Review: Undaunted: Leadership Amid Growth and Adversity

 

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.

Book Review: Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11

 

"Ordinary Heroes" is a memoir by FDNY Chief, Joseph Pfeifer, who was one of the first firefighters on the scene at the World Trade Center on 9/11, having watched American Airlines Flight 11 slam into the North Tower of the Trade Center from a few blocks away. And, Chief Pfeifer was, for a short time, the highest-ranking firefighter on the scene and started coordinating the rescue efforts. If you have watched the documentary "9/11" which was made by the French filmmakers, Jules and Gideon Naudet, and aired less than a year after the attacks, you will recognize Chief Pfeifer from that documentary.

The book is mostly centered around what happened on 9/11, and then the aftermath. Although, Pfeifer does quickly go over how he ended up joining the fire department, what it was like to work with his brother (who was one of the over 340 firefighters who died on 9/11 when the buildings collapsed), and what his life was like post-9/11.

There are a lot of interesting details in the book that, even if you have watched the documentary in which Chief Pfeifer was featured, you may not know. For example, he knew when he saw the plane hit the building that it was a terrorist attack and he ordered an evacuation of the South Tower almost immediately upon arriving at the Trade Center. Sadly, not only was that order never relayed to the people in the South Tower, an announcement was played in the South Tower telling people that the tower was secure and that they could stay at their desks, which resulted in many more people dying than would have, had Cheif Pfeifer's evacuation order been carried out. The book also details how the fire department was not patched into the police department's communications, which included information being relayed from the police helicopter circling the buildings, so Chief Pfeifer had no idea the South Tower collapsed, and the rapidly decaying condition of the North Tower was not relayed to him. So, while he did order an evacuation of the North Tower to the firefighters, he did not do so as a mayday call, which probably resulted in people moving faster to get out of the building. The last 1/3 (or so) of the book discusses Pfeifer's work post-9/11 working to make high-rise buildings more secure, and coordinating fire and police cooperation during high-scale emergencies. 

The book is relatively short, right around 300 pages, and reads very quickly. Chief Pfeifer gives a harrowing description of what he, and the others with him, experienced on 9/11 and conveys the pain of losing not only his literal brother but many of his firefighter family members as well. It is a great book that is definitely one of my must-reads.

Book Review: The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda

 

The Black Banners is a book about the investigations against and attempts to capture members of al-Qaeda, really from the time it began to become a threat to the United States, up to the killing of Osama bin Laden. It was written by Ali Soufan who was an FBI agent stationed in the NY office, who worked for John O'Neil, and who was one of the lead investigators of the bombing of the US Cole and heavily involved in the interrogations of various al-Qaeda members after the 9/11 attacks. 

In the book Soufan provides his perspective on the fight between the FBI and the CIA before 9/11 and the two agencies' refusal to cooperate with each other. Of course, Soufan is coming at the issue from the FBI's point of view, but he is convinced that if the CIA had shared relevant information with the FBI (especially after the FBI requested information that Soufan states the CIA claimed to know nothing about, but actually had a lot of intelligence on) before 9/11 that the attacks could have been stopped. He also rails against the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that were authorized by the Bush administration and were largely carried out by the CIA and military contractors. Soufan is convinced it amounted to torture and did not yield any useful information, whereas the traditional interrogation techniques that he and other FBI agents used garnered a lot of useful information from detainees, including the identity of Osama bin Laden's courier, and led to the discovery of bin Laden's location in Pakistan. Soufan also alleges that one of the detainees that he initially questioned probably could have provided information that would have led to finding bin Laden sooner, had Soufan been allowed to let the detainee make a phone call to his family, which was overruled.

The material can be quite dense, and it is hard to keep all the people that Soufan mentions in the book straight. There is an appendix in the back of the book that does detail who the key players mentioned in the book are (or were), but even if you read that first, keeping all of the names straight can be difficult. There are some portions of the book that are redacted with black bars. In a note at the beginning Soufan states that while the FBI cleared the material in the book, he was required to submit the book to the CIA for review (which he argues should not have been the case), and the redactions are largely due to the CIA. Frankly, some of them are very stupid, such as a sentence like "I interviewed so and so, and I asked him about [insert topic]," and the only thing that would be redacted were the two Is in the sentence. In some cases, however, entire pages of material got redacted. Most of the redactions are in the final 2/3 of the book in which Soufan discusses the interrogations that occurred after 9/11. 

The book is over 500 pages long and is not what I would call a quick read. If you have read other books such as The Looming Tower (or have seen the Hulu miniseries of the same name, in which Soufan and O'Neil are basically the main characters), you will know some of the material in the book. However, Soufan provides a lot of behind-the-scenes information that would otherwise not be known if you haven't read this book. It is very informative and definitely worth reading.

Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11

 

This is a group of stories collected by the author, Damon Dimarco who started collecting the stories within months of the 9/11 attacks. The book was originally published a few years after 9/11 and then updated for the 20th Anniversary to add a new forward by the former NY governor, George Pataki, and provide some updates on some of the people that he originally interviewed. 

The book exclusively details the experiences of people who were in or around the towers that day as well as people whose lives were affected in the aftermath, such as a woman who basically became the organizer who made sure workers at "the pile" were fed daily, got supplies, etc. The people whose stories are told in this book are generally not the more well-known people who have been interviewed many times, but that does not lessen the impact at all. The author does a very good job of conveying the emotion of the people who he interviewed, which was sometimes very raw, and did a good job of introducing who that person was and what they were like during the interview.

My only nitpicky point about the book is that it does contain a number of errors, mostly about the timing of events on 9/11, both in the timeline at the beginning of the book (e.g., saying that Flight 93 took off at 8:01 AM when it took off at 8:42 AM and that it crashed at 10:10 AM when it really crashed at 10:03 AM), and in the footnotes (e.g., in one he said the south tower was hit first by Flight 175). Even if these made it into the initial printing, they should have been corrected in the update. However, those do not really take away from the rest of the book, and since the point of the book is not to detail the overall events of the day, but to tell the stories of the people affected, it is still a five-star book in my mind. 

The book is fairly long, just under 500 pages, but it does read fairly quickly. Most of the stories span about 5 pages, give or take, but there are a couple longer ones that span about 20 pages, so there are a lot of natural stopping points. It is definitely one that I consider a must-read.

Book Review: The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11

 

The Eleventh Day is a book that details pretty much all aspects of the September 11th terrorist attacks, from the leadup to the aftermath. The paperback version was put out about 10 years after the attacks, right around the time bin Laden was found and killed. The "main" portion of the book is 456 pages, 88 of which detail what happened on September 11th, the attacks, and the response by the first responders, the FAA, the military, and the politicians. Then, there are about 120 pages of endnotes, where the authors flesh out even more information. Much of the book details the lead-up to 9/11, including the rise to power of Osama bin Laden and his network and how the US government really failed to deal with him during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. It also detailed the backgrounds of the hijackers and how they got into the US and what they were doing in the months before the attack. Basically, it ties everything together about how 9/11 was planned and how it was carried out, and then goes into a lot of detail about how the US responded.

One big takeaway I got from the book is just how ill-prepared the US was for an attack like this despite the many warnings that were out there that something huge attack, including the possibility of using planes, was looming. And, just how easy it was for essentially, a group of idiots, many of whom should have been caught long before the attacks had the US intelligence agencies and law enforcement been working together. In fact, the CIA knew that at least two of the hijackers were in the US and did not tell the FBI until about two weeks before the attacks, long after the CIA no longer had any idea where they were. What was also interesting is that at almost all levels, al-Queda nearly bungled the entire thing, including bin Laden initially choosing people with high school educations to be pilots until it was made clear that they had no chance at ever learning how to fly a plane and were then relegated to being the muscle hijackers. Many of the hijackers could not speak English and even on 9/11 itself had no idea if they had plane tickets, screwed up the boarding process, and really should have been prevented from even boarding the airplanes. So, it really details the luck of the terrorist and the failures of our government.

In the sections on the aftermath, the book also tackles the various conspiracy theories, from things that amount to good questions but have relatively simple explanations, to the outright crazy things that some have come up with. They also provide great detail on how the Bush administration took their eye off the ball in going after the people who actually planned the attacks, and outright lied about Iraq playing some kind of role in 9/11 to justify the Iraq war.

My only complaint about the book is the endnotes. The text in the book does not have endnote numbers, and the notes themselves are categorized by chapter and the pages the material is referencing. But, if you really want to match portions up, you would have to flip back to the page in the book and then back to the endnotes. It would be very tedious. I think the authors would have been better to use footnotes and put the source material at the bottom of each page in the text. The book would really not have been much longer, and it would have been easier to go through the source material. That is what knocks it down a star for me.

Overall, the book is very well-written and extremely well-sourced. It has a lot of detail that even if you have watched many of the documentaries on 9/11 or read other books, including the very real possibility of a fifth plane that may have been targeted for hijacking that day that never got to take off. So, if you are looking for a book that really details how and why 9/11 happened, this is definitely worth reading.

Book Review: The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It

 

This is a book written by John Miller (who was an ABC News Correspondent), Michael Stone, and Chris Mitchell about the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks. Miller has a unique perspective for a couple of reasons. First, he interviewed Osama bin Laden in person when bin Laden declared war on America from a hovel in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. And, he was also good friends with FBI agent John O'Neil who was the head of the FBI's NY counterterrorism unit who was trying to hunt down members of Al Qaeda up until 2001 when he took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center and was on the job for two days when he was killed in the 9/11 attacks. 

The book really details the entire lead-up to 9/11 covering more than just the 9/11 plot and attacks, but went back to the late 1980s/early 1990s when terrorist cells in NY killed the Rabbi who was the head of the Jewish Defense League and carried out the original World Trade Center bombing back in 1993.  The book does quickly detail the events of 9/11 at the beginning of the book and then about halfway through profiles some of the hijackers and their movements before 9/11. The book does include a lot of detail about what the hijackers were doing in the US up to 9/11 including the fact that it did not seem like the plan was fully formed even very late into the operation because the leader Mohammed Atta, appeared to still be trying to get his hands on crop dusting planes as late as August, suggesting that they would crash planes filled with chemicals into targets, which would have caused far less damage than they ended up inflicting.

The big takeaway from the book, for me, was how the infighting and refusal to cooperate between the intelligence agencies (mostly the FBI and the CIA) led to vital pieces of information that could have resulted in the plot being disrupted, being missed, not shared, overlooked, etc. Blatant examples of this were the fact that the CIA knew that two of the hijackers were members of Al Qaeda and were in the US and did not tell the FBI until about two weeks before the attacks, and even though the terrorists were using their real names to make purchases, the FBI could not track them down, and the FBI leadership refusing to let local agents look at Zacharias Mussoui's computer despite ample evidence that he had ties to terrorists. There was no smoking gun that the authors could point to that suggested if it was discovered ahead of time absolutely would have led to the plot being foiled before the attacks, but that evidence trails could have been followed that might have prevented the attacks. 

Overall, the book is a very good read, and very well-sourced. While much of the information in the book is well known, especially to those who have read other books about 9/11 or watched some of the documentaries on the subject, it does have some details that I had not seen before and I have read many of the reputable books and watched almost all of the reputable documentaries on 9/11. It is definitely one of my must-reads.

Book Review: My 9/11-Through inflight Eyes

 

This short book (just under 100 pages) was written about the author's experience on 9/11/01 and how the terrorist attacks affected her in the days, months, and years after the attacks. The author was a member of the ground staff for United Airlines operating out of Newark New Jersey on 9/11. She coordinated the flight staff and helped the flight attendants to get checked in and ready for their flights. As a result, she was one of the last people to see the crew of United 93 before the flight took off.

The book is largely a collection of what look to be journal entries written over the course of about 8-9 years in which the author writes about her experiences. She does not focus much on 9/11 itself, although she does talk about seeing the flight crew as they checked in, and some of the calls she took from family members as well as discussing the calls that flight attendants made from the plane during the hijacking to report what was going on. Most of the book deals with the aftermath, and the author's struggles with PTSD, depression, and substance abuse, and the effect it had on her ability to work, her family, etc. 

As I said, the book is short and is a very quick read. I would not call it something that is easy to read, but it definitely details and exemplifies the toll that the events of 9/11 had on people who were not on the planes or in the buildings yet were deeply affected nevertheless. I would not say that the book is worth the price of the hardcover or paperback versions, but if you subscribe to audible or kindle unlimited (or something comparable in which the book is available) it is worth reading or listening to.