History can be told in one of two ways. The first way is cold, hard facts written down in a neat and orderly timeline. The second way is to tell the stories of those who lived through history.
After the Fall New Yorkers Remember September 2011 and the Years That Followed was published days before the tenth anniversary of the attack. Edited by Mary Marshall Black, Peter Bearman, Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith, the book contains a series of interviews with a group of diverse New Yorkers who worked or lived near the Twin Towers in the fall of 2001.
I loved this book. Those of us above a certain age all have stories to tell about 9/11. But these stories are personal, hard hitting and may draw a few tears. I especially appreciated the interviews with the survivors who are Muslim-American or originally from South Asia. After the towers fell, it was all too easy to point the fingers at anyone who even remotely looked like those who were responsible for 9/11. It is much harder to separate those responsible from the average person of color who was just as affected by the attack as any American.
I absolutely recommend it.
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