9/11 Books, Video and Other Resources

Some of the best resources I've found for presenting and interpreting 9/11.

Books

City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. James Glanz and Eric Lipton, Times Books, 2003. The best, most comprehensive telling of the World Trade Center’s history, from its conception and construction to its destruction and beyond.

102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, Times Books, 2005. Stories from inside the towers on 9/11. Good architectural diagrams of the buildings’ structure, and discussion of the design decisions which had an impact on survival.

Messages: Signs, Visits, and Premonitions from Loved Ones Lost on 9/11. Bonnie McEneaney, William Morrow, 2010. In a different vein, tells stories of peoples’ after-death experiences with 9/11 victims. Well done and respectful of both belief and skepticism in the afterlife.

Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. Jere Longman, HarperCollins Perennial, 2003. Does a really good job in telling the Flight 93 story, especially given its publication before many in-flight records were released.

The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge. Michael Daly, St. Martin’s Press, 2008. Good biography of an amazing man and faithful priest, the NYFD Chaplain killed at the World Trade Center.

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. The factual baseline for what happened on 9/11 and the events leading up to it, although sadly limited in many respects.

The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. Ballantine, 2011. Update on many of the missing pieces from the 9/11 Commission Report.

Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from The New York Times. The New York Times, Times Press, 2002. Brief sketches of most people killed at the World Trade Center, as published in the well-known NY Times series.

Video

Frontline: Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. Exceptional exploration of faith and theological issues around the 9/11 attacks, focusing on people directly involved in the disaster and its response. Unfortunately out of print. Try your local library.

The Heart of Steel. Angelo L Guglielmo, Director. Moving presentation of some of the volunteer experiences in the World Trade Center response.



Online

911digitalarchive.org. The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which healing? Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Image
This gospel lesson is difficult for preachers. Which healing do you pay attention to? Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 Much has been made in recent years of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak. The daily loss of her life-blood not only indicated health problems (an infection? fibroid tumors? uterine cancer?) and sapped her strength (anemia?), it made her unclean. It deprived her of touch, of entry to the Temple, of normal social interaction. For twelve years... Even in her pursuit of healing she tries to be audaciously inconspicuous. The healing she finds in Jesus restores her body, her spirit, and her place in the community. It is difficult to ignore the story the daughter raised from the dead. The brief descriptions in the gospel lesson are easily filled out by imagination and experience. Children continue to die, by accident, illness, and violence, and the chord this sounds is recognizable, resonating deep in the soul. The death of a child strikes hard, on the family and also on the
Read more

Who do you think you are?

Image
Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16:13-20 As I listened to the lessons for today, it seemed to me that identity issues are prominent. Jesus asks his disciples "who do you say that I am?" Have they been paying attention? Are they aware of what’s going on? The apostle Paul is also concerned with a couple of identity issues: using the different gifts given to each member, and also finding or forging a new identity, as members of the body of Christ. One reason these "identity issues" stood out for me is that I have been reading a book about the management style of the Jesuits, an organization within the Roman Catholic church. The author, trained as a Jesuit before leaving for a career as an investment banker, makes the case that the thing which has allowed the Jesuits to be a successful 450 year old company, is their focus first of all not on what they do, but on who they are. Their core strength as an organization originates no
Read more

Up in the Air - Sermon for Easter 7

Image
The following sermon was preached in James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, at a communion service preceding commencement, May 17, 2002. While many of the references are particular to the setting, the general themes (where to look for God; the awkwardness of losses, in-between times and transitions;it remembering our own stories in light of vocation and mission) are transferrable to other settings. One explanatory note: the chapel was decorated in part by cords hung at irregular places throughout the space. Graduates and other Union students had been invited to hang from these cords symbols from their time at Union (a backpack, theology books, a stethoscope, baby clothes, a chaplain's vest from the WTC recovery), requiring partipants in the service to take note of them and also negotiate their movements around the objects. Up in the Air So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He repli
Read more