Items related to American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center
The story of the people who responded to the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. Within days, Langewiesche quickly secured unique, unrestricted, around-the-clock access to the site, the rescue workers & laborers there, & the meetings of city officials, engineers, construction companies, & consultants. He became the only writer to be ''embedded'' in the World Trade Center -- to live virtually night & day among the unbuilding crew as they brought order to an instance of chaos unprecedented on American soil. Firefighters, police officers, widows, bureaucrats, & profiteers attempted to claim the work -- & the tragedy -- as their own, the emotional & political implications loomed large as well.
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About the Author:
William Langewiesche is the author of three well-received books, Cutting For Sign, Sahara Unveiled, and Inside the Sky. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, among other publications.
From Publishers Weekly:
Langewiesche had unrestricted access to Manhattan's Ground Zero during the post-September 11 cleanup, and his triptych of articles (originally published in the Atlantic Monthly) takes readers through what became known to its denizens as the Pile, from the moment of destruction to the departure of the last truckload of rubble from the ruins a little less than nine months later. He gives a calm, precise account of the air traffic controllers trying to understand what was happening to the hijacked planes and explains precisely how the towers collapsed. The stars of the rest of this story are people one doesn't usually read about: administrators, engineers and construction workers in charge of the cleanup-a process in which, as Langewiesche describes it, order emerged from chaos by the sheer force of will of those in charge. One such outsize personality is David Griffin, a demolition expert who drove up from North Carolina, bluffed his way onto the restricted site, and quickly wound up in a position of authority. There's also a frank account of the tensions between police and firefighters at Ground Zero. Most fascinating, though, Langewiesche takes readers right inside the smoking Pile, as he joins workers on dangerous underground expeditions to see whether the slurry walls that keep out the Hudson will hold, or whether freon might be leaking from underground refrigerators. This is a genuinely monumental story, told without melodrama, an intimate depiction of ordinary Americans reacting to grand-scale tragedy at their best-and sometimes their worst.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDiane Pub Co
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0756787815
- ISBN 13 9780756787813
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages205
- Rating
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