I was a reporter for the New York Daily News at the time of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and covered the FDNY in the aftermath of 9/11. Being on the site the day after the attack and following the recovery efforts, I came to know some of the FDNY family members who lost loved ones that day, as well as members of the department, as they struggled to rebuild. The family members’ stories stayed with me long after the attack. I always felt that the story of what happened to the FDNY members killed that day and the story of their family members who wanted answers had not been fully told.
I wrote...
Don't Look Back: The 343 FDNY Firefighters Killed on 9-11 and the Fight for the Truth
It is a fast-paced thriller based on real events that follows the mother of an FDNY probie killed on 9/11 as she teams up with a local New York City tabloid reporter to unearth what really happened to her son and the other 342 FDNY firefighters who perished during the attack on the World Trade Center.
The 9/11 families risk everything to expose a corruption scandal that put faulty radios in the hands of the FDNY, leading to the worst loss of life in the history of the department. This compelling story takes a different perspective on a worldwide event and gives voice to the 343 members of the FDNY who perished, largely unaware that the buildings were about to come down upon them.
Those of us who were alive on 9/11 remember exactly where we were and where we watched the endless TV coverage of the horrific attack on the World Trade Center, including the collapse of the Twin Towers. We all think we know what happened.
I was captivated by 101 Minutes because it documented what was going on within the Twin Towers before the collapse of the South and then the North Towers as those trapped above the fire floors and below desperately tried to find a way out. The two New York Times reporters who wrote the book – the late Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn - are former colleagues of mine at Newsday and at the NY Daily News, and they were the best in the business at the time of the attack.
There is no better history of the struggle to survive. They drew on years of experience covering the FDNY and the City of New York to piece together this detailed and dramatic account.
At 8:46 a.m. that morning, fourteen thousand people were inside the World Trade Centre 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…
The author is the former FDNY Commissioner during 9/11 who provides an honest account of his time in the FDNY, starting as a firefighter in the Bronx in the 1970s, rising to lead the firefighters union and then the department when former Mayor Rudy Giuliani picked him to be the FDNY Commissioner.
He pulls no punches and examines the challenges the department faced before and during 9/11, including his own role. I liked the book because it is an authentic account from somewhere who was there on 9/11 and who knows the FDNY inside and out.
New York City's thirtieth Fire Commissioner shares his personal experiences during and after the September 11 attacks, from his work beside Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, to his remembrance of lost colleagues and friends. 125,000 first printing.
Long before he became a Trump apologist, Rudy Giuliani was regarded by some as “America’s Mayor" in the wake of 9/11.
He led the city’s response to the World Trade Center attack, and in the view of many, he provided strong leadership in that crucial time, marshaling the city’s resources during the search, recovery, rescue, and beginning of the clean-up process. He attended what seemed like an endless stream of funerals for FDNY and NYPD members who were killed on 9/11, eulogizing the city’s dead heroes.
Barrett and Collins – two skilled NYC reporters – dive deep into the failings of the Giuliani mayoral administration that may have contributed to the loss of life among first responders that fateful day, including the well-documented problems with FDNY radios that hampered the efforts to evacuate FDNY members before the Twin Towers collapsed.
Rudy Giuliani emerged from the smoke of 9/11 as the unquestioned hero of the day: America's Mayor, the father figure we could all rely on to be tough, to be wise, to do the right thing. In that uncertain time, it was a comfort to know that he was on the scene and in control, making the best of a dire situation.
But was he really?
Grand Illusion is the definitive report on Rudy Giuliani's role in 9/11—the true story of what happened that day and the first clear-eyed evaluation of Giuliani's role before, during, and after the disaster.
I admired the thorough and bi-partisan approach taken by the 9/11 Commission (authorized by then President George Bush) to examine the international, national, and local ramifications of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Relying on first-hand testimony and extensive documentation, the commission staff provided valuable insights into the missed signals, mixups, and government failures on many levels that left America open to the worst attack on our homeland since the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Chief Pfeifer was the first ranking officer to arrive at the World Trade Center on the morning of the attack. He was in the area to investigate a report of a gas leak when he saw a plane crash into the North Tower.
He was being followed by a film crew for an unrelated documentary. The film footage shows him in the WTC lobby as he tries to determine what is going on and as he and others begin the rescue operation that would engulf virtually the entire FDNY and turn tragic when the Twin Towers collapsed.
This book takes you beyond the news coverage and provides a first-hand account from a ranking FDNY member who was on the scene.
From the first FDNY chief to respond to the 9/11 attacks, an intimate memoir and a tribute to those who died that others might live
When Chief Joe Pfeifer led his firefighters to investigate an odor of gas in downtown Manhattan on the morning of 9/11, he had no idea that his life was about to change forever. A few moments later, he watched as the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Pfeifer, the closest FDNY chief to the scene, spearheaded rescue efforts on one of the darkest days in American history.
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives about adoption, exposing the fallacy that adoption is always good.
In this story, I reckon with the pain and unanswered questions of my own experience and explore broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization, and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children. Now is the moment we must all hear these stories.
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
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