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Loading... 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (2005)by Jim DWYER, Kevin FLYNN (Author)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A well-written, detailed account of the time period between the airplanes striking the Towers and the horrific collapse. It is an emotional read that made you feel for the victims and the families who searched for them. ( ) This book tells the stories of the people who were inside the towers on 9-11. It's a raw record of the day and what people saw, did and experienced. Certain details in this book have lingered over the years. For example some firefighters actually reached the fire that was raging on the upper stories. One elevator remained operational in the south tower after the second plane crashed into it; and that elevator took a few firefighters up to the 40th floor. Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer climbed another 38 floors to the impact zone, arriving at the lobby on the 78th floor by 9:51 a.m. Their tower collapsed eight minute later. A large crowd of firefighters, some of them suffering from chest pains and the like under loads of 60 pounds or more, were still resting on the 19th floor of the north tower as the last of the interviewed survivors came down. While reading "102 Minutes," I recalled two books especially: John Hersey's "Hiroshima," which reconstructs that bombing from interviews with six survivors; and Walter Lord's "A Night To Remember," the definitive account of Titanic's sinking. There are many more similarities with Lord's account -- particularly the attempt, by a non-participant, to keep an eye on hundreds of personal stories. Excellently written, filled with many tidbits and facts that I did not know in my previous readings of the subject. I confess that the descriptions of those in the situation of trying to find a way out from floors above the point of entry of the planes that hit the tower, was so difficult to read. Despite the sadness and sheer horror that those trapped inside the south, and north towers, I recommend this one! This is a meticulous read, and difficult from the perspective of the subject matter. Hard to be completely analytical as you are taken inside the trade centers where thousands of people tried to fend for themselves to survive. But I think this is a very important book, one I discovered by accident and am happy I did. It dissects the construction of the trade center from an engineering and building code perspective, and then it dissects the strengths and weaknesses in emergency response operations that led to how things played out on Sept. 11. All of this is done while providing profiles of some of the people who were in the trade centers that day, using various records and interviews to tell their stories. Some lived and some did not. Worth reading for the lessons learned on multiple fronts.
I can't imagine there will be another act of terrorism that will terrify us the way the attack on the World Trade Center did. In "102 Minutes" Dwyer and Flynn have done a remarkable job of resisting the temptations of hindsight. They have recreated the moments in which we lost our capacity for that kind of surprise and given us a fitting tribute to the people caught up in one of the great dramas of our time. And for people still haunted by the events of that day, reading "102 Minutes" provides a cathartic release. AwardsDistinctions
The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted. At 8:46 AM on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers -- reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it -- until now. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews; thousands of pages of oral histories; and phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women -- the 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished -- who made 102 minutes count as never before. Read by Ron McLarty. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)974.71044History & geography History of North America Northeastern United States (New England and Middle Atlantic states) New York New York (N.Y.) 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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