September 11, 2001

Starred review from August 18, 2003
New York Times
editor Hampton (Kennedy Assassinated! The World Mourns) presents a personal, emotional account of the attack on the World Trade Center, profiling two people who were in the towers when the planes hit, the family of a woman who perished and some who helped with the rescue effort, including members of the NYFD's Ladder Company 6. The chronicle gets off to a rather slow start, offering detailed overviews of these individuals' backgrounds and their routines on that infamous Tuesday morning. Then Hampton describes the beginnings of the disaster, and his account becomes riveting. He profiles the slow descent, by stairs, of a blind man and his guide dog from the 71st floor of the North Tower; the blind man's heightened senses make his egress particularly terrifying: "Omar kept hearing things that others could not—the creaking of the steel girders that held the giant building upright in the sky and the cracking of the walls." Hampton dramatically chronicles the firefighters of Ladder Company 6 and their aid to a slow-moving grandmother, helping her inch down the stairs of the North Tower as it collapsed around them (they were famously rescued from the rubble). Accompanying b&w photos bring the events of this day into focus, ranging from the chillingly iconic (the towers burning) to the quietly tragic (firefighters carrying the body of their beloved chaplain, Father Mychal Judge, who died while giving the last rites to a firefighter at Ground Zero). Strong, and occasionally rawly emotional, reporting. Ages 12-up.