Above Hallowed Ground : a Photographic Record of September 11, 2001

Call# 974.71 Abo

On the morning of September 11th, a new kind of horror shook the world. Terrorists crashed two passenger airliners into the World Trade Center in the worst attack on U.S. soil in the nation’s history. But at the same time a new generation of heroes rose up to fight it. This book chronicles not only the devastation of that day, but also the valor and heroism of those who saved thousands of lives.

Not one of these photographs has been published before. On top of that, these images offer a vantage point no ordinary photographers could obtain: They were taken by members of the New York City Police Department, uniformed and civilian, who were on the scene moments after the first plane hit and who were behind the scenes during the entire rescue and recovery effort.

In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman

Call# Graphic Novels 974.71 Spi

For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics (which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks), he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey--with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit--the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy.

On That Day : the Definitive Timeline of 9/11 by William M. Arkin

Call# 973.931 Ark

A veteran military and security analyst and commentator, reconstructing a minute-by-minute narrative of 9/11, asks and answers some vital questions: What did we learn from 9/11? And are we any more likely to be ready if something like it ever happened again?

The Only Plane in the Sky : an Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

Call# 973.931 Gra

Journalist and historian Garrett Graff tells the story of September 11, 2001 as it was lived, in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, Graff paints a vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks. Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York City, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker underneath the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard the small number of unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United Flight 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid. More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, this is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son working in the North Tower, caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger’s last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from rushing into the burning building to try to rescue their colleagues. A tribute to the courage of everyday Americans, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama on a day that changed the course of history and all of our lives.