Amazon.com
In 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, New York Times writers Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn vividly recreate the 102-minute span between the moment Flight 11 hit the first Twin Tower on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the moment the second tower collapsed, all from the perspective of those inside the buildings--the 12,000 who escaped, and the 2,749 who did not. It's becoming easier, years later, to forget the profound, visceral responses the Trade Center attacks evoked in the days and weeks following September 11. Using hundreds of interviews, countless transcripts of radio and phone communications, and exhaustive research, Dwyer and Flynn bring that flood of responses back--from heartbreak to bewilderment to fury. The randomness of death and survival is heartbreaking. One man, in the second tower, survived because he bolted from his desk the moment he heard the first plane hit; another, who stayed at his desk on the 97th floor, called his wife in his final moments to tell her to cancel a surprise trip he had planned. In many cases, the deaths of those who survived the initial attacks but were killed by the collapse of the towers were tragically avoidable. Building code exemptions, communication breakdowns between firefighters and police, and policies put in place by building management to keep everyone inside the towers in emergencies led, the authors argue, to the deaths of hundreds who might otherwise have survived. September 11 is by now both familiar and nearly mythological. Dwyer and Flynn's accomplishment is recounting that day's events in a style that is stirring, thorough, and refreshingly understated. --Erica C. Barnett
From Publishers Weekly
Drawn from thousands of radio transcripts, phone messages, e-mails and interviews with eyewitnesses, this 9/11 account comes from the perspective of those inside the World Trade Center from the moment the first plane hit at 8:46 a.m. to the collapse of the north tower at 10:28 a.m. The stories are intensely intimate, and they often stir gut-wrenching emotions. A law firm receptionist quietly eats yogurt at her desk seconds before impact. Injured survivors, sidestepping debris and bodies, struggle down a stairwell. A man trapped on the 88th floor leaves a phone message for his fiancée: "Kris, there's been an explosion.... I want you to know my life has been so much better and richer because you were in it." Dwyer and Flynn, New York Times writers, take rescue agencies to task for rampant communications glitches and argue that the towers' faulty design helped doom those above the affected floors ("Their fate had been sealed nearly four decades earlier, when... fire stairs were eliminated as a wasteful use of valuable space"). In doing so, the authors frequently draw parallels to similar safety oversights aboard the ill-fated Titanic nearly 90 years before. Their reporting skills are exceptional; readers experience the chaos and confusion that unfolded inside, in grim, painstaking detail. B&w photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
The meticulous reportaging and superior writing on display in 102 Minutes have earned its authors high praise. Piecing together this unsentimental account from interviews, voicemail messages, e-mails, government documents, and other sources, The New York Times journalists have created an exquisitely detailed account of how thousands of individuals experienced two of the most difficult hours in U.S. history. Alternating between an intensely personal narrative style and thoughtful, critical questioning of how such a tragedy might have been ameliorated, the book is a welcome supplement to the numerous news accounts of 9/11.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From AudioFile
It's hard to imagine that the horror of 9/11 took place within a window of a mere 102 minutes, but indeed it was so. Be prepared for harrowing and heroic accounts gleaned from every possible source--phone messages, police and fire department communications, personal accounts, even the media--delineating the details at Ground Zero. Reader Ron McLarty handles the job with strong characterizations and the intensity the material demands. Listeners will find it hard to turn away from the nightmare but will find redemption in some of the stories of self-sacrifice that saved many lives. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
*Starred Review* New York Times reporters Dwyer and Flynn have compiled an unbearably painful but indispensable account of what transpired inside the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001--from the crash of American Airlines flight 11 into the upper floors of the north tower to the hallucinatory collapse of both towers in the 102 minutes that followed. The authors have combed through hundreds of interviews with witnesses and survivors, as well as transcriptions of thousands of radio transmissions, e-mails, and phone calls, to produce a taut, minute-by-minute account of the events. They also provide historical background at critical points in their narrative. In the compacted time of 102 minutes can be seen the human condition at its most despairing and its most noble: from poor souls seeking any relief from the inferno by leaping out of windows high in the north tower to four Port Authority employees who stayed behind to free more than 70 persons who were trapped. As inspired as the authors might have been by so many individual instances of courage and sacrifice, they take authorities to task: local fire and police brass, for example, for unresolved turf wars and miscommunications, and the Bush administration for underestimating al-Qaeda and hampering the 9/11 Commission's efforts at understanding exactly what happened. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Kevin Baker, New York Times, January 21, 2005
A masterpiece of reporting....succinct...riveting enough to be read in a sitting...heart-wrenching...Brilliant and troubling.
Tom Walker, Denver Post, January 23, 2005
Poignant, emotion-stirring and important…a story of how ordinary people exhibit extraordinary traits in times of peril.
Rosemary Herbert, Boston Herald, January 9, 2005
The writing - sometimes searing, sometimes factual but always appropriate - brings the human experience of disaster into focus.
Brian Palmer, Newsday, January 2, 2005
Many of the stories are astounding; almost all are heartbreaking…They accord these men and women the honor they deserve.
Ingrid Ahlgren, Providence Journal, January 23, 2005
It took the authors three years to describe what happened in 102 minutes…The book is worth the wait.
David Tarrant, Dallas Morning News, January 30, 2005
Superb reporting…The book vividly captures the stories of those struggling to survive. Heartbreaking and heroic.
Book Description
The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted.
At 8:46 AM on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers -- reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it -- until now.
New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews; thousands of pages of oral histories; and phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women -- the 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished -- who made 102 minutes count as never before.
Read by Ron McLarty
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