September 11 2001 nonfiction

Yesterday I featured fiction related to the terrorist attacks on America on September 11th 2001, today I am sharing nonfiction works.

102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer & Kevin Flynn - At 8:46 a.m. that morning, fourteen thousand people were inside the World Trade Center just starting their workdays, but over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages. Of the millions of words written about this wrenching day, most were told from the outside looking in. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn draw on hundreds of interviews with rescuers and survivors, thousands of pages of oral histories, and countless phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts to tell the story of September 11 from the inside looking out.
Dwyer and Flynn have woven an epic and unforgettable account of the struggle, determination, and grace of the ordinary men and women who made 102 minutes count as never before.

24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker: 9-11-01 The White House by Robert J. Darling - After Maj. Robert J. Darling organizes President Bush's trip to Florida on Sept. 10, 2001, he believes the next couple of days will be quiet. He has no idea that a war is about to begin. The next day, after terrorists crash airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Maj. Darling rushes to the president's underground chamber at the White House. There, he takes on the task of liaison between the vice president, national security advisor and the Pentagon. He works directly with the National Command Authority, and he's in the room when Vice President Cheney orders two fighter jets to get airborne in order to shoot down United Flight 93. Throughout the attacks, Maj. Darling witnesses the unprecedented actions that leaders are taking to defend America. As Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others make decisions at a lightning pace with little or no deliberation, he's there to lend his support. Follow Darling's story as he becomes a Marine Corps aviator and rises through the ranks to play an incredible role in responding to a crisis that changed the world in 9-11-01: The White House: 24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker.

500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars by Kurt Eichenwald - In 500 Days, Kurt Eichenwald lays bare the harrowing decisions, deceptions and delusions of the 18 months that changed the world forever, as leaders raced to protect their citizens in the wake of 9/11. Eichenwald's immediate style and true-to-life dialogue puts readers at the heart of these historic events, from the Oval Office to 10 Downing Street, from Guantanamo Bay to the depths of CIA headquarters, from the al Qaeda training camps to the torture chambers of Egypt and Syria. Eichenwald exposes a world of secrets and lies that has remained hidden until now.

The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda by Ali H. Soufan with Daniel Freedman - On September 11, 2001, FBI Special Agent Ali H. Soufan was handed a secret file. Had he received it months earlier--when it was requested--the attacks on New York and Washington could have been prevented. During his time on the front lines, Soufan helped thwart plots around the world and elicited some of the most important confessions from terrorists in the war against al-Qaeda--without laying so much as a hand on them. Most of these stories have never been reported before, and never by anyone with such intimate firsthand knowledge.This narrative account of America's successes and failures against al-Qaeda is essential to an understanding of the terrorist group. We are taken into hideouts and interrogation rooms. We have a ringside seat at bin Laden's personal celebration of the 9/11 bombings. Such riveting details show us not only how terrorists think and operate but also how they can be beaten and brought to justice.

The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden by Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan - Writing with access to thousands of recently released official documents, fresh interviews, and the perspective that can come only from a decade of research and reflection, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan deliver the first panoramic, authoritative look back at 9/11.
For most living Americans, September 11, 2001, is the darkest date in the nation's history. What exactly happened? Could it have been prevented? How and why did so much acrimony and bad information arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a quiet field in Pennsylvania? And what remains unresolved? What is certain: Discord and dissent continue to this day.
Beginning with the first brutal actions of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, The Eleventh Day tracks the precise sequence of events and introduces the players: pilots, terrorists, the airliners' passengers, and the innocents who died on the ground. Drawing on previously classified records and raw transcripts, Summers and Swan investigate the response of President Bush and the U.S. military that day, and the failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. They document the untruths told afterward by U.S. officials and, as a counterpoint, thoroughly consider the contentions of the "9/11 truth" movement. With meticulous research, they examine the personalities of the men behind the onslaught, analyze the motives that drove them, and expose the U.S. intelligence blunders that preceded the attacks. They note how afterward--without good evidence--the Bush administration persisted in trying to link  9/11 to Iraq. And they confront, finally, the question the 9/11 Commission's report blurred: Were the terrorists backed by powerful figures in another foreign nation--one the U.S. had long viewed as a friend?
Riveting, revelatory, and unforgettable, thoroughly sourced and complete with extensive endnotes, The Eleventh Day is the essential one-volume work on a pivotal event in our history.

Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff - Years in the making, this spellbinding, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting narrative is an unforgettable portrait of 9/11.
This is a 9/11 book like no other. Masterfully weaving together multiple strands of the events in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Fall and Rise is a mesmerizing, minute-by-minute account of that terrible day.
In the days and months after 9/11, Mitchell Zuckoff, then a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote about the attacks, the victims, and their families. After further years of meticulous reporting, Zuckoff has filled Fall and Rise with voices of the lost and the saved. The result is an utterly gripping book, filled with intimate stories of people most affected by the events of that sunny Tuesday in September: an out-of-work actor stuck in an elevator in the North Tower of the World Trade Center; the heroes aboard Flight 93 deciding to take action; a veteran trapped in the inferno in the Pentagon; the fire chief among the first on the scene in sleepy Shanksville; a team of firefighters racing to save an injured woman and themselves; and the men, women, and children flying across country to see loved ones or for work who suddenly faced terrorists bent on murder.
Fall and Rise will open new avenues of understanding for everyone who thinks they know the story of 9/11, bringing to life--and in some cases, bringing back to life--the extraordinary ordinary people who experienced the worst day in modern American history.
Destined to be a classic, Fall and Rise will move, shock, inspire, and fill hearts with love and admiration for the human spirit as it triumphs in the face of horrifying events.

Flight 93: The Story, the Aftermath, and the Legacy of American Courage on 9/11 by Tom McMillan - United Airlines Flight 93, which took off from Newark Airport the morning of September 11th, 2001, is perhaps the most famous flight in modern American history: We know of the passenger uprising, but there’s so much more to the story besides its harrowing and oft-told climax. Amazingly, the definitive account of this seminal event has yet to be written.
The book offers the most complete account of what actually took place aboard Flight 93 – from its delayed takeoff in Newark to the moment it plunged upside-down at 563 miles per hour into an open field in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Flight 93 provides a riveting and complete narrative of the lead-up, event, and aftermath of the flight, based on interviews, oral histories, personal tours of the crash site and evidence recently made public. It examines the lead-up to that horrific morning; the stories of the victims who were launched into the center of history; the revolt that saved untold amounts of carnage on the ground and likely, the US Capitol; the eyewitnesses and first responders who rushed to the crash scene; the impact on family members; the effort to uncover evidence at the site; and the legacy the story leaves for future generations.

The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by Terry McDermott & Josh Meyer - Only minutes after United 175 plowed into the World Trade Center's South Tower, people in positions of power correctly suspected who was behind the assault: Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But it would be 18 months after September 11 before investigators would capture the actual mastermind of the attacks, the man behind bin Laden himself.
That monster is the man who got his hands dirty while Osama fled; the man who was responsible for setting up Al Qaeda's global networks, who personally identified and trained its terrorists, and who personally flew bomb parts on commercial airlines to test their invisibility. That man withstood waterboarding and years of other intense interrogations, not only denying Osama's whereabouts but making a literal game of the proceedings, after leading his pursuers across the globe and back. That man is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and he is still, to this day, the most significant Al Qaeda terrorist in captivity.
In THE HUNT FOR KSM, Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer go deep inside the US government's dogged but flawed pursuit of this elusive and dangerous man. One pair of agents chased him through countless false leads and narrow escapes for five years before 9/11. And now, drawing on a decade of investigative reporting and unprecedented access to hundreds of key sources, many of whom have never spoken publicly-as well as jihadis and members of KSM's family and support network-this is a heart-pounding trip inside the dangerous, classified world of counterterrorism and espionage.

The Stories They Tell: Artifacts From the National September 11 Memorial Museum: A Journey of Remembrance edited by Clifford Chanin & Alice M. Greenwald - This poignant selection of artifacts--and their stories--from September 11 provides an official, lasting record of that day's experience. In both text and photography, the story of September 11 is told through a selection of powerfully moving artifacts from the 9/11 museum's collection that serve as touchstones to the day and its aftermath. From crushed FDNY trucks to the steel that was pierced as planes struck the Twin Towers, from victims' property pulled from the wreckage and returned to families (who later donated the property to the museum) to spontaneous memorials collected from around Ground Zero, the array of objects tell complex and often surprising stories. Poignant artifacts as monumental as the Vesey Street staircase--which offered an escape for thousands fleeing the towers--and as intimate as a loved one's wedding band or last recorded phone message are selected to illuminate people's experiences during and after September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993. The mission of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum is to bear solemn witness to the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center. The museum honors the nearly 3,000 victims of these attacks and all those who risked their lives to save others. It further recognizes the thousands who survived and all who demonstrated extraordinary compassion in the aftermath.

What We Saw: The Events of September 11, 2001 in Words, Pictures, and Video by CBS News - We each remember where we were, what we thought, what we felt, what we heard, and especially what we saw on September 11, 2001.
In words, images, and nearly two hours of video, What We Saw captures those moments. Now, in this tenth anniversary edition, Joe Klein delivers an introspective and intimate look at those catastrophic events--along with what we have learned, and how we have changed, since that fateful date.
As the world came to a halt that September morning, CBS News journalists worked tirelessly to provide detailed, accurate coverage, from the first interviews with eyewitnesses to a plane crashing into Tower 1 of the World Trade Center to the Towers of Light tribute six months later. In addition to the events that shook America's biggest city and its capital, What We Saw documents the tragedies that occurred elsewhere: from the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to the waves of pain that moved across a New Jersey commuter town.
Among the contributors are Jules Naudet, a French filmmaker who was working on a documentary about New York City firefighters when his subjects were called into service; Anna Quindlen, whose thoughts turn to a young family aboard United Airlines Flight 175; David Grann, who captures the hopelessness felt by families searching for missing loved ones; and CBS's Steve Kroft, who watched a small investment firm that lost dozens of employees slowly pull itself up from despair.
In What We Saw, each moment of September 11 and its aftermath is portrayed with candor and honesty by the CBS News correspondents, photographers, camera operators, and journalists who were there. This is an invaluable documentary of a day that forever altered our world.