This is one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. While reading I’d alter between feeling nausea, headache or an odd disassociative feeling where, I suppose, I was able to convince myself I was reading fiction. It isn’t fiction, but a documentary-like play by play of what it was like at the World Trade Center from the moment of the first impact until the destruction of the second tower. The now legendary communications foul-ups on behalf of the well meaning rescue teams are made very specific — we know now which lives went unsaved and why. Perhaps most upsetting are the accounts of people who would have gotten out — or would have been killed — if they just did one mundane thing a little differently. A photographer leaving Windows on the World is leaving on an elevator and hears a soft “Can ya hold that?” He sticks his hand out and two women get on the elevator. If he thought to himself “no biggie, they’ll catch the next one” those two women would be dead. The book has a million moments like that. Things I didn’t know: a few people (18) from the south tower impact zone actually did survive. I thought that if you were at or above the flames you were gone — but since the plane in tower two came it an angle, it did allow for a difficult escape route. Again, the communications foul-ups prevented lives being saved. There were others who didn’t know about the escape route, and if the 911 operators knew about it, the message could have been passed on. Somewhat uplifting are the stories of the civilians who acted as first responders to the crises. Everyday people inside the building, it is argued, did perhaps as much as the police and firemen who raced to the scene, but couldn’t climb up in time. Anyway, if, by the end, you read this book and haven’t converted your whole personal philosophy to pacifism I just don’t understand where you are coming from. The violence depicted in this book is so horrible that one could never wish for any scenario that could put any civilian through a similar experience. I finished this book convinced more than ever that violence only leads to violence and, most importantly, violence is something human beings don’t need to put themselves through. We are not animals, we are humans — and violence in unnatural. Everyone who is born will die, but to die violently is unacceptable. (yeah, heavy. . .this book will do that to ya.)
