I haven't finished this book yet but that's only because I have a BIG problem with falling asleep while reading. I assure you if I didn't have this problem, I would've finished the book in one day. My sleeping problem never annoyed me this much until I started reading this. I've never wanted to keep reading a book so bad but after about 10 pages I start nodding off.

So far it's a great book. I can tell this book was a great challenge to write and I am shocked it's not as thick as the Bible. It captures so many experiences as is, but you just know as you read it that it could only be 2% of all experiences in the tragedy. That is not to down play this book. It's truly an amazing feat to meld these stories together down to the very second of when it happened.

I'm about 5 chapters in and each chapter is going minute by minute from the first strike. So the first chapter is 8:46am, and the second chapter is 8:47am. (Prologue starts at 8:30am.) All of these people's experience in that ONE minute. There's a lot of jumping from person to person which was confusing at first, but once you stop trying to remember all the names you catch on to who is who.

I was expecting this book to be about only people who fought their way out and made it alive, because how could they have so much info down to the second of what they were doing if they weren't ever seen again? Well, they compiled all phone calls, messages and eye witnesses. This is the story of people who didn't make it out as much as people who did. Truly tragic.

Another thing I appreciate about this book is that it doesn't go into the conspiracy theories and politics surrounding 9/11. They left all the disputable crap out of the book which is probably the most respectful thing about this book. I know that some people will still dispute everything in the book, like it's just words on paper it means nothing. But this is rich with factual history when it was built and why everything happened as it did. It goes into the fire code that didn't exist when the towers were built to the window design made for fear of heights. It has maps and diagrams and photos which was really helpful. I actually wrote down a few key notes on my bookmark to keep an idea of the whole picture.

It doesn't quite "pull you into the building like you're there as a person" like some books do. I don't think that's at all possible in the first place. It explains the person's name, their career, a little back story, what floor they're on and who they're with in that minute. It does this with every person that comes into play. So it kinda jumps back and forth between Who They Are & What They Are Saying and Doing.

It's hard to explain what I'm trying to say. Like, you get sucked into the book in what they are doing (you can see it in your mind) and then brought back to earth when it goes to the next person.
I want to be sucked into the whole thing and I feel selfish and rude for saying that, but I just have to say it because I can see this being difficult to read for younger people or people who just don't like reading.

Youd almost have to be really interested in 9/11 to get into this book. I've done so much research on it and I wasn't directly affected by this event but I saw it like everyone else. Life moved on and one day I just wanted to look back on it. At that point I almost became obsessed with it. I say almost because it didn't consume my whole life but a big piece of it. I wasn't one of those people going into the conspiracy theories. I just wanted to know everything about it that was fact. I've watched every video, searched every transcript and one day I guess there was nothing left to see. Yet, I still to this day feel so empty about it. This book however is filling some of the emptiness. It's a whole new perspective on the event. In every minute there's what feels like years and years of experiences.

I think it's safe to say that the authors are respectful of the victims and don't go into dramatised morbid perspectives. One sentence that stuck out to me was when someone described what they heard on the other side of a wall... "yelling and commotion, but not panic". I could hear those noises in that sentence and it was people working together to get out. That was the goal. If the, "but not panic" wasn't there I probably would've heard yells of pain and anguish. I think most people think of one horrific picture of screaming and blood and crying. While that did exist, the buildings weren't filled with total panic, blood and anguish.

It was profound for me in that moment to understand the vast differences from floor to floor and even room to room. An entire company upstairs decided it was time to leave immediately, while downstairs there was no sense of urgency to leave the building.

I'm only 5 chapters in and I have felt feelings and thought things that I didn't before. It's a fresh look that leaves me feeling less sick about "what was it like"... We all know how the book ends and I think any human is left feeling empty after that. I just think that people need to attempt to understand the horror of being inside trapped or almost out of the building when it's too late. It's just that human empathy is so short when it comes to 9/11 so we try to grow it.

It's a great book and I almost want it to be in schools as a mandatory read.

This book is far and away the best and most detailed account of what happened inside the towers that I've ever studied. I've read so many accounts of that day, most of them written by survivors and eyewitnesses who unfortunately were not professional writers...and it showed. But this book is different in that it is clearly authored and edited by real journalists. It hooked me from page one and I read every single page, including the epilogues. It brought me to tears in places, and I was truly sorry to finish the book. It's extremely well written. It's not in any way preachy or political and it isn't a documentary. It's straight, solid investigative reporting, combined with the first hand accounts of both the living and the dead, woven together into a chilling and unforgettable narrative of courage, sacrifice and the raw instinct to survive.

The authors somehow managed to tie hundreds of personal stories into one cohesive and symbiotic narrative that made it feel like I was actually there, inside...watching it all happen. My heart was racing for most of the book. Knowing what's going to happen gave the passing of time in the book a feel of intense urgency as you travel with these people down staircases, get stuck with them in offices, agonize with them as they lie on the floor choking on smoke, and hang out of windows with them.

Like everyone else who watched these events unfold on TV that day, all I saw were two burning buildings that ultimately fell. When they fell, I was overcome with grief at the staggering loss of life I'd just witnessed. But even so, the deaths of all those people felt so impersonal and forensic somehow. The dead were just statistics to me, and that felt so wrong. My only real connection to the terrible human cost in blood and suffering was in seeing the people falling from the buildings. I watched them die, and the sight kept me up nights. Perhaps it's only morbid curiosity, but I couldn't help but wonder what could possibly be happening in there that was so unbearable that jumping became the better option. Who were these people? Who loved them and lost them? What were their last minutes of life like? What did they endure as the building fell apart around them? Who spoke to them, saw them, or tried to save them?

That's what makes this book so special. It does an incredible job answering those seemingly unanswerable questions in a detail I didn't think possible, and I'm deeply grateful for that. I feel a genuine need to connect personally with their experiences because otherwise, I'm in great danger of becoming desensitized to their loss. I don't ever want to start to think of that day as the day I watched two buildings burn and disintegrate before my eyes and a bunch of people died, because that's all my eyes could see. I knew there was so much more to the story, but when the towers fell, it was as if that hideous boiling debris cloud also shrouded the personal stories of all the people who died that day. I was forced to witness a mass murder, and I feel like I have a right to know what happened to the people I saw injured and killed.

What makes their stories even more tragic is the fact that so many of those people could've been saved. This book carefully documents the multitude of catastrophic failures that day that ultimately sealed their fate, right down to the design of the buildings back in the 60's. The missing stairwells, the inoperative communication systems, the complete inability of the police & fire departments to collaborate, the inadequate fireproofing, the builder's decision to reclaim marketable floor real estate at the expense of public safety. And then there's that God-awful announcement telling people to go back upstairs and get back to work, contravening their natural instinct to exit the building, or telling people to stay put at their desks when they should've been evacuating...that whole Titanic mentality that had even me believing that the towers could never fall.

This book completely dispels the myths surrounding the highly-vaunted bulletproof construction of the towers. In retrospect, it's clear now that the buildings were a death trap from the very beginning...nothing but sheet rock, drywall and inadequately fireproofed steel that collapsed like a house of cards. The fact that they collapsed and were completely obliterated in just 10 seconds proves that the American public was sold a giant bill of goods regarding the "indestructible" construction of the towers and the safety of the people inside. There was never any proof of that claim...just a mountain of hubris and a lot of wishful thinking.

This book sets the bar very high, and future scholarly works on the subject will have a hard time attempting to meet or exceed the outstanding quality of the journalism used to create this account of September 11th. In years to come, I can easily see this book becoming required reading for students of this event in American History.

This book gives amazing minute by minute accounts of the movements and actions of the civilians, firefighters, NYPD and PAPD during those harrowing hours. The heroism of not only the rescuers but the civilians who risked and gave their lives to save others. How simple actions such as what stairway to take or which direction to go, became the defining factor of who lived and who died. It is an emotional and difficult read because of the tragedy of the day and forever afterward. I do think that besides having a better idea of what transpired inside is an important lesson as to what to do in emergency situations and the importance of having adequate escape routes, better communication, and ensuring that all buildings are fire resistant and up to code. Very well written.