Title: 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers
Author: Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn
Genre: Nonfiction, Political Science, US History
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I remember this day, and it never fades or re-writes itself.
Every year during the week of 11 September, I read this book. It’s my memorial ritual. My memories of this day: I worked the night shift at a crappy job and turned on the tv when I got home a few minutes before the first plane hit. By the time the morning was over, I was numb, calling all my friends who lived or worked in the city to see where they were to find that the phones stopped working around 10 am East Coast-time.
102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers captures all the feelings I felt, reminding me of that panic, disbelief, and confusion. It’s not unhealthy to remember that sick feeling or the devastation.
Utilizing the day’s events’ innate urgency, Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn creates a page-turning ‘ode to 9/11.’ I highly recommend anyone who would like to read the story of what happened that day in the towers to read 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers.
Dwyer and Flynn have created an expansive narrative by collecting survivor stories and the victims’ tragic legacies. Emergency services’ call logs, 9-1-1 transcripts, voicemail, and newsreel footage are some of the eeriest of records the thousands of voices lost from our lives’ echoes that day, and the authors have given these voices life after death.
A History Channel special called 102 Minutes that Changed America is nearly the same story as the book if you aren’t much of a reader. Oh, and if the page count discourages you, half of 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers is acknowledgments and indices.
About Jim Dwyer:
Jim Dwyer is an American journalist who is a reporter and columnist with The New York Times, and the author or co-author of six non-fiction books. A native New Yorker, Dwyer wrote columns for New York Newsday and the New York Daily News before joining the Times
Connect with Jim Dwyer:
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About Kevin Flynn:
Kevin Flynn is an American journalist who is an editor with The New York Times and the co-author of 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. His work as an investigative editor helped earn The New York Times numerous awards, including a 2009 Pulitzer Prize. He served as the newspaper’s police bureau chief from 1998 to 2002 when he became investigations editor for the newspaper’s Metro desk. He is currently investigations editor for the paper’s Culture desk.
Connect with Kevin Flynn:
Website | Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon
