That day, through the television, I watched the buildings and tried to see through the smoke and the fire to the people inside. In fact, I remember saying to one of my sons, "The people! What about all the people up on those higher floors?" Then, in that first horrible instant, the buildings and the people were gone.....twice. For me, there was a horrible void, as if I didn't know something vital. I was haunted by the question - "What were all those people on the higher floors doing during the hour and a half?" I was almost beyond comfort.
Through this book, I met the people. I cried.

This was an absolutely amazing book. Not just because of the true-life accounts of many who survived (or, in many cases, didn't), but mostly because the authors pull no punches in telling the story of 9/11/01.

This isn't a book that bashes the government, both local and national, but it does tell both the good and the bad, the positive and the negative. While I was uplifted and encouraged by so many examples of human kindness, I was devastated to read that so very many deaths could have possibly been avoided, if there had just been better communication between political-minded departments.

Also, the fact that so many shortcuts were taken in building the World Trade Center, simply to create more rentable space, shows just how far people will go to make a buck. It saddens me that so many lives might have been saved if there were more staircases, if they had been spread out more, if they had had proper fireproofing.

If you're interested at all in the story that is 9/11, then this is a must-read.

There are times you want to put this book down. It is hard to take. But it is a superior record of what we know - or sometimes, what we have to assume - happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Even those stories I'd heard about, they take on another dimension in 102 Minutes. It is thoroughly researched and painstakenly recounted. The horrifying moments when people in the South Tower are watching people plunge out of the North Tower ... actually seeing their faces so close but not able to do anything. One part of you is saying: I don't want to read any more about this. But the other part is saying: We can't forget what the terrorists are capable of doing to us.

One of the best books I've read in a long time. Highly recommending to everyone I know.

It was hard to rate at 5 stars only because the subject matter is upsetting. I had started to read this book and put it down for some reason--but when I picked up again I read the rest (a little less than half) in short order. Reading the book has prompted me to read more about the events of 9/11. I will suggest my son--a high school freshman read it, to learn about this upsetting part of contemporary history.

gripping, horrific, this book will sear your memories and help you understand why so many things went wrong that day. It should dispel all 9/11 conspiracy theories if only those conspirators would read this book.

This was a hard book to read. You knew it happened and so many lives were lost but some were saved. It goes to show that the departments of the police and the fireman needed to work together and did not. I would recommend this book.

I have read many books and researched 9/11 extensively. This book is one of the best that I have read. I was very impressed with the way that the the writer conveyed the voices of those that were lost as well as the survivors. It is a very sensitive subject and it was handled quite well. This was not an easy book for me to read. I had to put it away and go back to it many times, but it is extremely important to me that what happened on 9/11 is never forgotten and that the sacrifices made by those that were lost are honored and remembered. I highly recommend this book. It is honest and the experiences of those that were there are clearly conveyed.

This book was more than I ever imagined it would be. I thought it would be a more technical and tedious account of the horrible events of that September morning; man was I surprised whe I began to read this wonderfully written book. The stories are compelling and show you how people can come together in the most hedious of circumstances. I was blown away at the depth of the reseach into the events of that day, and even found myself learning more about this tragedy than I knew before hand. My this book illustrate to everyone the power that the average Joe has when it comes to caring and helping his fellow human being. The heroes of that day are not only the NYPD or the FDNY, but many of the doomed individuals in the buildings of the World Trade Center.

I have never been to New York. Watching the ongoing events of 9/11 had a very surrealistic overtone. It was real, yet it wasn't. This book is the first of the several that I have read, that really "put you there". Reading the description of a person actually standing on the street, trying to comprehend what they were witnessing, really brought it home for me. It includes a diagram of the building (including where the planes hit) that helps the reader to realize how many people were "without hope" from the very onset of the strike.

If you only read one book about the events of 9/11, this is the book.

As a native New Yorker who in childhood watched the Twin Towers rise to dominate the skyline, I was like many other people who considered the buildings two soulless gray monoliths. We called them the boxes the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building came in. And certainly, in their singular dual angularity, they lacked either the graceful Art Deco aestheticism of the Chrysler Building or the reassuring solidity of the Empire State Building. Many were the times I wished the architect, Minoru Yamasaki, had had even a smidgen of artistic creativity. The unrelieved gray bulk of the towers (charitably described by New York Times reporters/authors Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn as being a very Wall Street apropos "pinstripe") was broken only at top and bottom by stylized gothic windows and by the exterior banding of the sky lobbies. I set one of my (early and unpublished) novels in the North Tower as a symbol of the single-minded preoccupations of the Me Decade. In white, the buildings might have seemed carved in alabaster, or perhaps an enclosed rooftop arboretum might have added charm---who can say? But as the years passed, the Towers took on personalities of their own as the World Trade Center complex grew and throve, and like all real New Yorkers I developed an affection for these sentinels who seemed to anchor Manhattan Island to the sky like some kind of bizarre hydrofoil afloat at the juncture of the harbor and the rivers.

And like all real New Yorkers I was stunned by the news of their destruction. I remember just where I was---I had driven a friend to attend Traffic School in Fort Lauderdale. She was dutifully taking a written test when another friend called me on my cell:

"The World Trade Center was attacked."
"That's old news."
"What are you talking about?"
"What are YOU talking about? It happened in 1993."
"No. Not that. I mean this morning."
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"
"Go find a television."

And I did, and stood there horrified, watching as the Towers---where my friends and relatives worked---dissolved into dust. Staggering outside, I approached a stranger who hadn't heard the news. Although I don't remember his exact words I'm still angry at his comments about the rich brats who deserved what they got, leavened with a little antisemitism. To this day, I wonder where that idiot has gotten himself to. No place good, I'll wager.

The nightmare of the news---the planes flying smack into the Towers, the Towers burning and then collapsing in upon themselves, the dust storm that blanketed my hometown, the sight of rescue workers DIGGING WITH THEIR BARE HANDS in a fruitless attempt to find survivors---all have left their mark upon me. It has only been recently---and it is now six years later---that I can watch programs and read books about that awful day. And I cry.

102 MINUTES is Dwyer's and Flynn's incredibly well done recounting of the destruction of the Towers on that bright late summer morning. Strictly a story of small heroisms amid the larger tragedy, Dwyer and Flynn place us eeriely INSIDE the Towers during the fateful hour and a half and some between the first attack and the ultimate destruction of the WTC. Dwyer and Flynn have obviously listened to thousands of man-hours of recorded 911 calls, read tens of thousands of pages of transcripts, and interviewed scores of people connected with Nine Eleven and the Towers in general in order to present us with this memoir and memoriam. It would be tempting to say that 102 MINUTES is definitive, but given the tens of thousands of stories that make up that day, no one book may ever be definitive.

In the midst of the "untold story of the fight to survive inside the Twin Towers" Dwyer and Flynn also find time to take the authorities to well-deserved task: We discover that the Rockefellers (the political and economic midwives of the WTC in the 1960s) managed to force extensive liberalizations of the building codes through the New York Legislature just before ground was broken. Thus the Towers rose with untested architectural modifications to the steel infrastructure, fewer and non-fireproofed stairwells, and other Code-beating changes that made these most modern buildings completed in 1974 less capable of withstanding structural trauma than the Empire State Building, completed in 1933 (and remember, it was hit by a plane in 1945). All in the name of maximizing rentable floor space, protections that might have saved lives were simply deemed unneccessary. Instead, the builders relied on "Titanic Syndrome"---they're the biggest, they'll withstand anything thrown at them. Truly, no buildings in the world could withstand being struck by jets flying at 550 MPH, but perhaps they needn't have collapsed so utterly.

Dwyer and Flynn do not spare the New York City bureaucracies---The agelong enmities and service rivalries between The Finest and The Bravest hampered effective action. This takes nothing away from the actions of individual First Responders, but the lack of coordination between NYPD, FDNY, EMS and PAPD (the independent Port Authority Police Department who had first jurisdiction within the WTC) undoubtedly cost lives. People were variously told to evacuate, to stay put, some sent back inside, and many given no direction at all. Communications breakdowns meant that occupants, police, fire, and other authorities all essentially had no idea what was going on, even after the South Tower collapsed suddenly. The lack of communications can be put down to the moribund Mayor's Committee (established in 1993) that was to have overseen interservice activity---but "America's Mayor" Guiliani disregarded its existence, much as he has continued to slight the needs of the injured and ill among The Finest and The Bravest who lived through that day.

Little (but enough) is mentioned of the planes, the hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, The Pentagon or Shanksville. This is very much a "local" history of the event, and is very much spiced with the spirit of the Big Apple.

New York is a city that has grieved, but Dwyer and Flynn leave us with the realization that New York, New Yorkers, Americans---and indeed all people of spirit---will endure. The world changed ineradicably on September 11, 2001 (just as it did on December 7, 1941), but it is still a world where life goes on.

An essential read.

Poor design. Complacency. Poor communications. These are elements in the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Center that caused or contributed to thousands of deaths. Read 102 MINUTES to see how these factors affected ordinary people, heroic or trying to survive, who were caught in this nightmare.

But for readers like me, who work in office towers built in the 1970's, the fire-safety issues raised in 102 MINUTES are also disturbing. Just for the record, I work in a 40 story glass tower with 10 elevators in the core of building and only two fire stairs, which are positioned directly behind the elevators.

For me, the lessons of 102 MINUTES include: 1)Your fire safety director doesn't know what's going on so question the announcements made over the PA system. 2) Find a stairwell and go down through the fire zone to safety; don't wait... there is no roof top rescue. 3) If the building experiences a trauma, such airplane impact, it may lose water pressure. This is bad news, since office towers are designed to put out fires through their sprinkler systems. In a tower fire, firefighters are on rescue missions only. 4) Smoke hoods and executive parachutes are not silly ideas.

Poor design. Complacency. Poor communications. These are elements in the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Center that caused or contributed to thousands of deaths. Read 102 MINUTES to see how these factors affected ordinary people, heroic or trying to survive, who were caught in this nightmare.

But for readers like me, who work in office towers built in the 1970's, the fire-safety issues raised in 102 MINUTES are especially disturbing. Just for the record, I work in a 40 story glass tower with 10 elevators in the core of building and only two fire stairs, which are positioned directly behind the elevators.

For me, the lessons of 102 MINUTES include: 1)Your fire safety director doesn't know what's going on so question the announcements made over the PA system. 2) Find a stairwell and go down through the fire zone to safety; don't wait... there is no roof top rescue. 3) If the building experiences a trauma, such airplane impact, it may lose water pressure. This is bad news, since office towers are designed put out their own fires through their sprinkler systems. In a tower fire, firefighters are on rescue missions only. 4) Smoke hoods and executive parachutes are not silly ideas.

102 minutes. Hard as that may be to believe, that's all the time that elapsed between the moment that Flight 11 struck the first Twin Tower and the instant that the second tower collapsed. I expect that all of us, at some time or another, have imagined ourselves trapped in one of those buildings and wondered what our struggle for survival would have required of us. We will never forget those horrible images of people falling or jumping from the upper floors of the Towers, nor the pictures and stories of the heroes who were everywhere that day.

At times I found 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, to be painful reading. The book took me much longer to finish than I anticipated because I could only read it for a few minutes at a time before having to put it down for something less depressing. In actual fact, I read the book over a period of several months, finally finishing it last night.

Through hundreds of survivor interviews and countless hours reading transcripts of telephone and radio conversations, the authors were able to recreate much of what happened in the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. Much of what went on in the buildings was truly inspirational, with countless heroes to be found selflessly helping those too injured or physically impaired to get themselves down those dozens of flights of stairs that had to be negotiated if they were to survive.

But those 102 minutes were also filled with heartbreaking stories of the hundreds of people who were trapped in offices above the points of impact of the two crashes. Those people never had a chance of survival because their only exits to the lower floors, stairways and elevators, had already been destroyed. There was so much smoke, and the buildings so soon showed signs of being unstable, that roof top helicopter rescues were also impossible. Phone calls for help quickly changed to last messages to loved ones when the trapped realized that they were going to die.

Some of what Dwyer and Flynn learned while researching 102 Minutes will also anger the reader because, while it is true that some 12,000 of the almost 15,000 people in the buildings managed to escape, more should have gotten out alive than did. The combination of sheer chaos, poor communication systems, and building code exemptions taken over the years unnecessarily claimed hundreds of lives. Even after the first tower had collapsed, most fire fighters and policemen in the second tower had no idea that the first tower was gone or that the tower in which many of them were resting for a final attempt to reach its upper floors was in danger of an imminent collapse itself. Some 200 of them are believed to have died together that way when the second tower fell. And despite the communication problems exposed by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, New York policemen and fire fighters still found it near impossible to communicate with each other, further limiting the chance that they and many of the tower office workers would survive the day.

But most disheartening of all is the fact that there were simply not enough stairways in either building to effectively evacuate the many thousands of people who worked in them each day. Real estate and office space is at a premium in New York and the Port Authority was able to get building code exemptions that allowed the Twin Towers to be constructed with fewer exits than they should have contained. Fewer stairways meant more office space to rent, and that's the trade off that was chosen. The fact that many of the existing stairway sections were so damaged or destroyed in the initial crashes meant that many of the survivors never had a chance.

While this is not an easy book to read, it has much to offer to those who manage it. There are many lessons to be learned from what happened on September 11, 2001 and 102 Minutes is a clear presentation of those lessons. Let's all hope that those in authority will be better prepared if something like this horror ever happens again.

102 minutes. Hard as that may be to believe, that's all the time that elapsed between the moment that Flight 11 struck the first Twin Tower and the instant that the second tower collapsed. I expect that all of us, at some time or another, have imagined ourselves trapped in one of those buildings and wondered what our struggle for survival would have required of us. We will never forget those horrible images of people falling or jumping from the upper floors of the Towers, nor the pictures and stories of the heroes who were everywhere that day.

At times I found 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, to be painful reading. The book took me much longer to finish than I anticipated because I could only read it for a few minutes at a time before having to put it down for something less depressing. In actual fact, I read the book over a period of several months, finally finishing it last night.

Through hundreds of survivor interviews and countless hours reading transcripts of telephone and radio conversations, the authors were able to recreate much of what happened in the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. Much of what went on in the buildings was truly inspirational, with countless heroes to be found selflessly helping those too injured or physically impaired to get themselves down those dozens of flights of stairs that had to be negotiated if they were to survive.

But those 102 minutes were also filled with heartbreaking stories of the hundreds of people who were trapped in offices above the points of impact of the two crashes. Those people never had a chance of survival because their only exits to the lower floors, stairways and elevators, had already been destroyed. There was so much smoke, and the buildings so soon showed signs of being unstable, that roof top helicopter rescues were also impossible. Phone calls for help quickly changed to last messages to loved ones when the trapped realized that they were going to die.

Some of what Dwyer and Flynn learned while researching 102 Minutes will also anger the reader because, while it is true that some 12,000 of the almost 15,000 people in the buildings managed to escape, more should have gotten out alive than did. The combination of sheer chaos, poor communication systems, and building code exemptions taken over the years unnecessarily claimed hundreds of lives. Even after the first tower had collapsed, most fire fighters and policemen in the second tower had no idea that the first tower was gone or that the tower in which many of them were resting for a final attempt to reach its upper floors was in danger of an imminent collapse itself. Some 200 of them are believed to have died together that way when the second tower fell. And despite the communication problems exposed by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, New York policemen and fire fighters still found it near impossible to communicate with each other, further limiting the chance that they and many of the tower office workers would survive the day.

But most disheartening of all is the fact that there were simply not enough stairways in either building to effectively evacuate the many thousands of people who worked in them each day. Real estate and office space is at a premium in New York and the Port Authority was able to get building code exemptions that allowed the Twin Towers to be constructed with fewer exits than they should have contained. Fewer stairways meant more office space to rent, and that's the trade off that was chosen. The fact that many of the existing stairway sections were so damaged or destroyed in the initial crashes meant that many of the survivors never had a chance.

While this is not an easy book to read, it has much to offer to those who manage it. There are many lessons to be learned from what happened on September 11, 2001 and 102 Minutes is a clear presentation of those lessons. Let's all hope that those in authority will be better prepared if something like this horror ever happens again.

This is an excellent book. I bought while traveling and very difficult to put down once you start it. The accounts put the disaster in a real perspective. I would recommend this book to everyone except to the youngest readers.

Based on a recommendation from my niece (who's just an avid of a reader as I am, *and* she works in a book store!), I got a copy of 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. This is a moving story of the 9/11 tragedy told from the point of view of those who were inside the buildings when it happened. It only took 102 minutes from the time of the first impact until the collapse of the second tower...

Dwyer and Flynn interviewed hundreds of people and pored over transcripts and records related to that fateful day. From that, they were able to piece together stories of those who survived and those who perished. A number of the people that are followed were able to find that slim escape path that led them past the devastation of the affected floors and out to the street level. Far too many others were trapped above the wreckage with no way out. Their phone calls and pleas for help leave you no choice but to feel the desperation and confusion they faced over what happened. What's sad is that many who died in the South Tower had the opportunity to evacuate the building and get away from potential danger. But the messages that were conveyed by officials were that *something* happened in the North Tower, but there was no danger to it's twin. The lack of caution and the feeling that business was more important meant that many ended up directly in the path of the second plane when it crashed into the South Tower. The authors also analyze the building code issues that contributed to the failure of the escape routes, as well as the mass confusion and lack of communication that caused the death of many firefighters and aid workers who weren't able to evacuate in time (even after the first South Tower collapse).

Reading a book like this caused me to look at my surroundings in a whole new light. Do I know where escape routes are in the building where I work? Do I know where *alternative* routes are if the main one is blocked? And more important, am I fit enough to be able to survive an escape attempt? If you work on the 3rd floor of a building, it's one thing. But to be on the 90th floor of a skyscraper, with no elevator access, and the likelihood of descending (and reascending) dozens of flights of stairs might be enough to put your life in jeopardy. Even more so if you're called upon to assist someone else during an evacuation. Makes you think about whether you should commit to using the stairs more rather than taking the lazy one-floor elevator trip.

This isn't an easy emotional read, as the people are real and many of them died. But it's important to understand what happened during their survival efforts. Building codes are there for a reason, and it's not to make more rentable space on each floor. Reading a book like this could mean the difference between living and dying should you find yourself in a similar and equally unexpected disaster scenario such as this.

In the aftermath of the terrible events of 9/11, I followed the media's version of events at a distance and with a large degree of scepticism. In an event of 9/11's magnitude and complexity, with so much emotion and politics involved, the real truth might take 3 or 4 years to come out. This book appears to tell the truth, at least in regards to what happened, and why, to the people in the twin towers. The authors are both talented and experienced reporters and New Yorkers, with no particular axe to grind. The authors went to source for most of the book (interviews, documents, tapes, etc.). There is good documentation given in regards to each chapter. There are tasteful and poignant photographs, as well as helpful schematics and illustrations. I don't see how a book like this, about events like this, could have been written better.

In my title to this review, I described this book as shocking because it explains why:

-Most of the people who died in the towers did not die because Islamic fanatics drove airplanes into the buildings. They died because unscrupulous, avaricious and/or stupid people corrupted and weakened the building codes in the 1960's, allowing the fire traps known as the World Trade Center 1 and 2 to be built. For example, the number of staircases required for such buildings was halved and the requirement for a super-sturdy, ventilated fire tower was dropped, in the interest of making the buildings cheaper to build.
-Over objections from the architect and building engineers, the new innovative flooring in the buildings was never allowed by the Port Authority to be fire tested, presumably because, if it failed, costs would go up if a new floor design was required, also resulting in the subsequent loss of retail space. The steel in the building was supposed to withstand a three or four hour fire, but unless tested no one knew if this would be so. With the Port Authority showing no interest in doing the necessary testing, the architect renounced responsibility for the consequences. In the years following the opening of the buildings, several incidents pointed out the need for upgrading fireproofing and structural deficiencies, but no serious remedial work was ever completed.
-Many people died because the New York Fire Department and the New York Police Department do not talk to each other, due partly to mutual dislike and partly to institutional incompetence. On September 11 police helicopters had the best view of the damage the fires were causing to the towers and passed this information on to their superiors. This should have resulted in a much earlier total evacuation of both towers, but the information did not get to the Fire Department, the 911 system, or the media, where it could have done much more good. The Fire Department did not even have a reliable and effective way of communicating with its own people in the towers. The authors will have stepped on a lot of toes in documenting all of the above, but they appear to have been fair and accurate. Besides, how are we going to learn and do better if we can't present the facts in the spirit of wanting to do better in the event of similar events in future?

This book is also incredibly sad because:

-You get to know an amazing number of wonderful, ordinary, everyday people in a short time, and you learn that some of them make it out of the buildings to continue on with their lives, and that many of them do not. You would have to have a heart of granite not to be moved to tears after reading some of the goodbyes and messages phoned out by people trapped and who knew they were going to die.

This book is incredibly uplifting because:

-You learn about the multiple acts of heroism, loyalty and resourcefulness performed by people under the most harrowing and arduous of circumstances. These acts were performed by trained officers and firefighters (many off-duty who came to the towers as soon as they heard of the situation), and by ordinary office workers helping their friends and often complete strangers. So many people stayed to help others when it was clear that the situation was extreme and that no one could be blamed for trying to save themselves.

Courage is the price that life extracts for granting
peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

-Amelia Earhart Putnam

In the aftermath of the terrible events of 9/11, I followed the media's version of events at a distance and with a large degree of scepticism. In an event of 9/11's magnitude and complexity, with so much emotion and politics involved, the real truth might take 3 or 4 years to come out. This book appears to tell the truth, at least in regards to what happened, and why, to the people in the twin towers. The authors are both talented and experienced reporters and New Yorkers, with no particular axe to grind. The authors went to source for most of the book (interviews, documents, tapes, etc.). There is good documentation given in regards to each chapter. There are tasteful and poignant photographs, as well as helpful schematics and illustrations. I don't see how a book like this, about events like this, could have been written better.

In my title to this review, I described this book as shocking because it explains why:

-Most of the people who died in the towers did not die because Islamic fanatics drove airplanes into the buildings. They died because unscrupulous, avaricious and/or stupid people corrupted and weakened the building codes in the 1960's, allowing the fire traps known as the World Trade Center 1 and 2 to be built. For example, the number of staircases required for such buildings was halved and the requirement for a super-sturdy, ventilated fire tower was dropped, in the interest of making the buildings cheaper to build.
-Over objections from the architect and building engineers, the new innovative flooring in the buildings was never allowed by the Port Authority to be fire tested, presumably because, if it failed, costs would go up if a new floor design was required, also resulting in the subsequent loss of retail space. The steel in the building was supposed to withstand a three or four hour fire, but unless tested no one knew if this would be so. With the Port Authority showing no interest in doing the necessary testing, the architect renounced responsibility for the consequences. In the years following the opening of the buildings, several incidents pointed out the need for upgrading fireproofing and structural deficiencies, but no serious remedial work was ever completed.
-Many people died because the New York Fire Department and the New York Police Department do not talk to each other, due partly to mutual dislike and partly to institutional incompetence. On September 11 police helicopters had the best view of the damage the fires were causing to the towers and passed this information on to their superiors. This should have resulted in a much earlier total evacuation of both towers, but the information did not get to the Fire Department, the 911 system, or the media, where it could have done much more good. The Fire Department did not even have a reliable and effective way of communicating with its own people in the towers. The authors will have stepped on a lot of toes in documenting all of the above, but they appear to have been fair and accurate. Besides, how are we going to learn and do better if we can't present the facts in the spirit of wanting to do better in the event of similar events in future?

This book is also incredibly sad because:

-You get to know an amazing number of wonderful, ordinary, everyday people in a short time, and you learn that some of them make it out of the buildings to continue on with their lives, and that many of them do not. You would have to have a heart of granite not to be moved to tears after reading some of the goodbyes and messages phoned out by people trapped and who knew they were going to die.

This book is incredibly uplifting because:

-You learn about the multiple acts of heroism, loyalty and resourcefulness performed by people under the most harrowing and arduous of circumstances. These acts were performed by trained officers and firefighters (many off-duty who came to the towers as soon as they heard of the situation), and by ordinary office workers helping their friends and often complete strangers. So many people stayed to help others when it was clear that the situation was extreme and that no one could be blamed for trying to save themselves.

Courage is the price that life extracts for granting
peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

-Amelia Earhart Putnam

You will be amazed at what you read and discover. This is a very goods book, if you want to learn about 9/11 or do a project on it. It will really touch you (it is really sad).

It is hard to call this a "great book" b/c the subject and content is still very real and very fresh in the mind of Americans. In the years since 9/11 there have been a number of films and documentaries on the heroism during United Flight 93, however there have not been as many on the WTC. This is probably due to the fact that there were so many people and so many stories to be told about what it was like in the WTC towers.

I think this book does an excellent job of putting you into the situation that was facing various people at various times and places in the towers. You feel the sense of panic, and confusion. You feel the fear and for some the ambivalence b/c they didn't understand the extent of the damage. It isn't confusing to switch to different people or different stories the book was well thought out and smoothly transitions.

The book also spends some time talking about the safety features of the towers and about the complications facing the firefighters and police of the day. I can only hope that lessons were learned from 9/11.

I think this is an interesting book to read and even though you know the outcome you still can't help that maybe, just maybe things will turn out differently. The book has the list of names of the people who did not survive 9/11 so when you are reading someone's story it is easy to flip to the back to find out what happened to them. I have to admit each time I looked I hoped beyond hope that they survived even when I knew it wasn't possible.

It is hard to call this a "great book" b/c the subject and content is still very real and very fresh in the mind of Americans. In the years since 9/11 there have been a number of films and documentaries on the heroism during United Flight 93, however there have not been as many on the WTC. This is probably due to the fact that there were so many people and so many stories to be told about what it was like in the WTC towers.

I think this book does an excellent job of putting you into the situation that was facing various people at various times and places in the towers. You feel the sense of panic, and confusion. You feel the fear and for some the ambivalence b/c they didn't understand the extent of the damage. It isn't confusing to switch to different people or different stories the book was well thought out and smoothly transitions.

The book also spends some time talking about the safety features of the towers and about the complications facing the firefighters and police of the day. I can only hope that lessons were learned from 9/11.

I think this is an interesting book to read and even though you know the outcome you still can't help that maybe, just maybe things will turn out differently. The book has the list of names of the people who did not survive 9/11 so when you are reading someone's story it is easy to flip to the back to find out what happened to them. I have to admit each time I looked I hoped beyond hope that they survived even when I knew it wasn't possible.

I'd had this book for several months before I had the courage to read it. I live in the Southwest & have no connection directly with anyone involved in any of the attacks on 9/11. But I was afraid this book would be too difficult to get through. It's an amazing book that really opened my eyes to the unbelievable experience of those in the towers. I cried through parts of the book, but I definitely felt inspired more than sad by those who gave their lives in an effort to help others. I now recommend it to all my friends who think it's still too soon to read an account of what happened that awful day.

Before reading this book I thought about the Twin Towers as two huge buildings. And I thought about the workers inside as a group of people.

After reading the book I find out what awesome buildings the Towers were. And I found out that those "people" were an extraordinary group of individuals. It was wonderful to meet them all. Such bravery and selfless actions that brought people out alive. And such heartbreak for the ones that could not escape.

When I read the last page, I knew I had lost a little piece of my heart.

Even while knowing the true & terrible outcome of this story, I found myself riveted to this book. As I read each of the minute-by-minute personal accounts, I found myself returning frequently to the provided diagrams of the towers and the included timeline to help me place each person in the sequence of events. Reading about someone's hour-long struggle to exit a builing while knowing the building they were in was going to collapse in less than a minute made their accounting all the more real and tenuous. Conversely, reading about someone's fateful decision to return to their desk for a forgotten item (while I knew their building was going to collapse before they had time to return to the stairwell) gave me pause. I happily discovered many of the people I was reading about did make it out, and I despaired for those who did not, some of whom I had figured out on my own because of the ticking clock of the timeline provided and their particular location. I could not put the book down and was surprised at the suspense I felt, given that I already knew the overall outcome. This book is a tribute to those who perished as well as those who survived in that it does not sensationalize nor exaggerate any of the true drama of the day; rather it just tells it like it was. It is simply a personal accounting of the incredibly short period of time between when the first plane hit until the last tower fell through the eyes of those who were there. For those of us who were not there, this book provides an emotional connection with the victims, albeit short and from our armchair, but a connection nonetheless, in a powerful way.

This is a GREAT book! I am 'teary' but this did not 'get' to me that way. It is WONDERFUL! I could read and learn about 9/11 without feeling as emotional as I usually am. I really liked that.

Truly one book on 9/11 you will like!

Rho

We just returned from NYC and one of my friends was reading this book. My interest was already in overdrive. Jim Dwyer's book provided an account of the survivors' stories. Most importantly he didn't sensationalize the accounts.

Throughout the reading of this book, I could not help but notice that the authors seem to feel that the real estate developers caused the destruction of the towers and the death of many people. The adoption of the 1960s code, the non-testing of the fireproofing, the elimination of the stairwells, all were for the increase in rentable space. Being in the industry, I must say that these authors are very uninformed how the process works, or why the developers truely did what they did. I live in a town where this attitude is taken by many people (real estate developers are evil greedy people), often with a good intent but executed poorly with biased information and slated statements. I don't want to argue over specific details, but the attitude taken is very cocky.

Too many blanket statements really turned me off in this book reagarding the greedy real estate people, and took away from the telling of stories about the groups of people. It was worth reading.

Jim Dwyer writes an excellent account of the events during those tragic 102 Minutes. He reminds us of the human side, everyday working people, Americans, the same type people we call friends, neighbors, family, ourselves. So many lives changed forever, so many stories to tell. You won't be able to put it down, but beware, you will run the gamut of human emotion. A must read.

Written like a screenplay shifting between numerous dramatic stories of personal struggle to survive, this book held my interest from page one to the end. The revelation of the details of the communication problems and the building's engineering flaws changed the way I view any building I enter whether high or low rise. I highly recomend this book to all who want or need to remember the true impact of the 9/11 attack on ordinary American citizens living their everyday lives.

A must read - gives most definitive accounting of the twin towers right after 9/11

Dwyer succeeds in putting together a complicated jigsaw puzzle, piecing together the final minutes of the World Trade Center by conducting hundreds of interviews with those who escaped this tragedy. This book, however, is far more than a page-turner, full of fascinating stories and anecdotes. Dwyer lays out the vast problems and dysfunctional historical relationships between the New York Police and Fire Departments. These problems should have been identified and solved years before, given the fact they were encountered during the 1993 WTC bombing. Not only were the interdepartmental problems not solved, they were exacerbated by Guilliani's insistence on placing an umbrella emergency services department right at the already-targeted ground zero, within one of the WTC buildings.
Dwyer also succeeds in giving context to the building codes which were put in place during the construction of the WTC during the late '60s. These codes allowed for fewer stairwells, as well as untested fireproofing materials. The building was, essentially, a vertical Titanic. It couldn't "sink," therefore appropriate safety measures were seen as unnecessary. The greatest memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims would be the establishment of appropriate codes for the next buildings built on the WTC site.
A well-researched book, full of fascinating stories and facts. The numerous graphics throughout the book help the reader picture and understand what went on from 8:46 to 10:28 the morning of 9/11.

I read 102 Minutes because I had to bring back *that day*. After five years of politics and posturing, I needed to remember how I really felt on September 11, 2001, not the day after, but on the day itself. Dwyer and Flynn have accomplished that. As so many nowhere near NYC that day, I watched on live television, frozen as I tried to imagine the people inside the Twin Towers. Through interviews and publicly available transcripts, Dwyer and Flynn have created a coherent narrative of precisely that, as they describe what happened both for many of those who survived, as well as for many who did not. I especially found myself returning often to look at the pictures of specific people as I read their stories. We truly do not need fiction.

One of the things I do for a living includes lecturing to college freshmen about the "fight/flight" response; that, as a reaction to everyday stress, it is not healthy. But when performing as it evolved to do, it enables people to perform at their mental and physical peaks. In that sense, Dwyer and Flynn's book celebrates human nature. In the face of terror and murder, it is worth remembering that there were 19 hijackers; there were 14 thousand ordinary people, rousted mostly from desk jobs, who responded to the actions of those hijackers with strength, character and grace.

As others have noted, this a gripping and frequently chilling book. It is also, however, a remembrance and a celebration of the human spirit.

Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn did the Old Grey Lady (NYT) proud with an excellent and very CANDID account of the final 102 minutes of the WTC complex. Some of the stories we are familiar with, many though, were a complete revelation. Obviously the terrorists are completely responsible for the deaths that day, and the bravery of the first responders knows no equal, however once again bureaucracy and lack of official and building communications doomed many hundreds more unnecessarily. I especially appreciate the skill in detailing the horrors witnessed that terrible day without resorting to gratuitous descriptions of many of the victims. The refrain displayed somehow honored the victims. It is hard to imagine that we on the outside looking in knew far more than many of those in the middle of the situation for a variety of reasons. This account, along with Stone's WTC the movie, United Flight 93 and American Experience 'Center of World' all tell the same story from different perspectives, each horrifying in their own way but very important nonetheless. I consider this book a MUST READ.

Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn did the Old Grey Lady (NYT) proud with and excellent and very CANDID account of the final 102 minutes of the WTC complex. Some of the stories we are familiar with, however many were a complete revelation. Obviously the terrorists are responsible for the deaths that day, however once again bureaucracy and lack of communication doomed many hundreds more. I especially appreciate the skill in detailing the horrors witnessed that terrible day without resorting to gratuitous descriptions of many of the victims. The refrain displayed somehow honored the victims. It is hard to imagine that we on the outside looking in knew far more than many of those in the middle of the situation for a variety of reasons. This account, along with WTC the movie, Flight 93 and American Experience 'Center of World' all tell the same story from different perspectives, each horrifying in their own way but very important nonetheless. I consider this book a MUST READ.

Though not quite done in real time, it is as close as one will probably ever get to being able to piece together the events of September 11th inside the WTC. Though there is some speculation on what went on in the towers, it is kept to a minimum.

The authors did an admirable job in trying to keep the reader (re)acquainted with the WTC tenants & staff / rescue workers they chose to follow through this ordeal. Having to go back and forth between timelines and towers it tended to get difficult to follow and remember who was who and where these individuals were. Flynn and Dwyer do this pretty well in the flow of the story.

They also do a good job balancing the survival stories with the inevitable tales of demise. A tragedy on this scale needed glimpses of survival. Without those, the story would have been unreadable and unbearable.

I understand the 4-5 star ratings. I do. It's just difficult to formulate the words to say this is a `good book', even if it is. At the very least, it's an interesting book. Not to be crass, but the reader knows the outcome of the book, yet it still keeps you on edge. You know there is a clock ticking, you even know the end-time, while the victims in the WTC do not. `102 Minutes' is compelling and heartbreaking all at the same time.

I gave this book 5 stars because it deserved it. It was a great replay of the events which unfolded. I was very, very disturbed by the fact that Ed Beyea had to perish because firefighters, etc. walked past him more than twice and did not try to assist him down the stairs. Wasn't one of the other wheelchair- bound employees placed into an eva-cu-chair and carried down to safety? And why didn't anyone coming out of the building let the officials know that a stairway was clear for passage in Tower 2? All those people on the top floors would have been spared if only somone would have communicated in a better fashion. I sat and read this book in less than 4 hours; I was riveted to the storyline and was eager to finish it.

This is one of the best books I have found concerning what was happening to the people who were inside the Twin Towers on 9/11/01. The first chapter begins by telling the reader that approximately 3000 calls were made to 911 within the first ten minutes after the first plane hit.

I watched on NBC's Today show as the incidences were taking place. I was horrified while watching (live) what was happening to the buildings and how people were reacting; e.g., watching their actions and expressions and seeing the injured being helped away from the buildings. However, I've wanted to find information on how the people inside the buildings survived and/or died. This is a compelling read for any history buff. It is an insightful and easy to read book. I have added it to my collection of events on that day in NYC.

If I knew then (when I went up to the observation deck) what I know now (from reading this book), probably, I never would have visited the Twin Towers. Although, they were beautiful while they lasted!

"102 Minutes" is a fast-paced, highly readable account deciphering the chaos inside the Twin Towers told chronologically, from the point the first plane hit until Tower 1 collapsed 102 minutes later. Through thousands of pages of interviews with survivors, journalists and NYC natives Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn place the reader directly into the heart of the cataclysm. Dwyer and Flynn do well to tell the story from a human perspective without dwelling on who shoulders the blame for the overwhelming amount of miscommunication and unpreparedness brought on by infighting between emergency departments -- as well as inherent structural and design flaws. Dwyer previously wrote a book on the 1993 WTC bombing and compares the two rescue efforts, detailing safety improvements and lack thereof in the interim. Perhaps most interestingly, Dwyer makes clear the reason many workers who were at their desks in 1993 refused to evacuate on Sept. 11 until, in the scant applicable cases, ordered to do so. The crisp, visual prose and the pace at which the disaster unfolds make "102" a quick read. While direct and unflinching, the account is at times introspective and poetic. Consider this passage toward the end of the book: "For twenty-eight years, in weather fair or foul, they (the towers) kept their distance, parallel lines that could not cross, no matter how hight the towers rose into the sky or how deep they sank into the earth. In a span of ten seconds, the south tower pulverized itself and became a mammoth cloud of dust that blasted into the base of the north tower, curling up the shafts and stairways of its twin. Geometry dissolved, the two buildings had met."

This book in no way dishonors the dead.

when i was reading it,i know how crazy this sounds, i kept hoping that more people got out. you come to know some of the people by reading their messages left on answer machines...
it is heart pounding suspense....even though you know the end.

and the end,it is written with much dignaty,compassion and awe.
the message I got from it was communications failure! on the part of all rescue radios. no one knew what the other was doing or saying. i really hope that in these many years later, this has improved.

This book is simply incredible. I read it in a day and found it very hard to put down. The authors do a wonderful job weaving personal stories of 9/11 with detailed information about the history of New York's building codes. This kind of storytelling and research are what journalism should be about.

No book can impart to readers the confusion, horror and desperation that most of us who were there felt that day, or the indescribable sadness that its memory still evokes. Thank goodness for that. But, this book does give readers as good and as accurate an overview of the day - from many different perspectives, experiences, and points of view - in relatively short space, without the distortions, filtering and "artistic" editing that any movie surely will and must have. I can personally attest to confusion and the uncertainty about what to do in Tower 2 during the moments after the first impact at Tower 1, and then in the 78th floor Sky Lobby, when the random or instinctive decisions we all made turned out to be life-saving or fatal - and to the horrifying experiences we had outside right next to the south wall, immediately underneath Flight 175 when it hit.

This account is straightforward and written in a way that is easy to follow and understand. I didn't find any distortions or significant omissions. Some of my colleagues are mentioned, and what is written about them matches what I know to be true. Many others, who are not directly mentioned, gave accounts of their experiences - in both Towers - that dovetail accurately with what is written here.

I hope that this book is widely read, to help honor the memory of all those who died on September 11, and to honor everyone else - survivors, loved ones, friends, colleagues, rescuers, and countless others who were marked forever in so many ways on that day.

This book was an amazing recount of the morning of 9-11 and those who were desperate to escape the towers before their collapse, along with the challenges they faced. Complete with diagrams, the book was very helpful in allowing those of us who never entered the towers to better understand the difficulty of escape for those trapped inside and of the firefighters and other responders who rushed into the doomed towers in the hope of saving more lives. A fair look at a terrible event.

I think that this is one of the best books written about what happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11. It is well-written and very detailed. It takes you from the moment the first plane struck the north tower at 8:46 AM until the north tower collapsed at 10:28 AM. I highly recommend this book as an essential book for any 9/11 library.

By narrowing the focus on the events of 9/11, the authors have produced a tightly written, dramatic and moving account of the events of that morning. Rather than pan from DC to NYC, from the external reaction to the internal, from the planes to the buildings, they focus solely on what happens inside the two towers in the 102 minutes from the first plane strike until the fall of the second tower. And rather than trying to tell the stories of everyone there--an impossible task--the authors focus on a few key people whose experiences represent those of many that day.

Each person is introduced almost entirely in terms of their role that day, with relatively little extraneous information except for details that help inform their 9/11 experience, such as the marathoner background of one of the first firefighters to reach the crash zone. Yet each feels like an individual, someone you have gotten to know at least somewhat by the end of the book. Despite moving between dozens of people, I never felt like I needed a scorecard to remember who each one was.

And they tell something of the story of the Towers themselves--not the whole panoramic view, but like the inhabitants, mainly in context of the factors of planning and luck that informed what happened to the buildings that morning.

Many have compared this account to Walter Lord's of the Titantic and I think the comparison is apt. Like Lord, the tight focus on a few dozen people brings the human angle into view while helping the reader imagine what so many went through.

The authors are journalists with the New York Times, and a journalistic style serves the book well as it moves between viewpoints, dramatic moments and background information that could have been dry but isn't. The authors were on the story from the beginning (one of them even spoke via phone that morning to two people who later died--the two were calling everyone, including reporters and TV stations, to let rescuers know where they were and that they were trapped) and through months of follow-up both in telling the stories of the victims and survivors, and the investigations that revealed details of how design and response and sheer bad luck contributed to the disaster.

The authors develop several themes, and again keep them in tight focus: the brutal lines drawn by random luck in who was able to make an escape and who was not; the way that design (particularly in shorting safety features to ensure more rentable space) helped contribute to that calculus; the fractures in relations between various authorities in the NYPD, FDNY, and other groups that kept people uninformed of crucial information. Occasionally their return to these ideas becomes slightly repetitive, but I admired the way they were able to successfully make their points without becoming either too technical or too polemical, and always keeping the main light on the human experience of that morning.

This book is extremely readable and hard to put down, although you know the ultimate outcome. Some of the individual stories I knew, and some I did not, but I learned much from reading the book and was brought to renewed admiration of what so many people did that day to help themselves and others to survive, and the bravery with which so many of the doomed faced their ends.

Not everyone will be interested in an account of that day--for some it is still to raw and others are tired of hearing about it, but for the interested reader, this book is a must.

I've read a few books on September 11 and this one is by far the best. It plays out Sept 11 in a minute by minute form, starting with a few minutes before the first plane hit. Something I found useful while reading was a diagram that showed exactly which floors took the direct impact of the planes in each building. It also shows which companies occupied those floors. The amount of detail is this book is unreal. There's so many first hand accounts of all the happenings that it feels like you are there with them. The book is almost impossible to put down. Some parts are graphic, but once again it gives the unfortunate true details of that day. If you want an depth, minute by minute timeline of what was happening when and where inside those buildings then this book is for you. The other September 11 books pale in comparison to this one.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 were an abomination with a terrible loss of innocent lives. However, after reading this well-written book, I also have to say that the tragedy was compounded by greed and hubris. As I read this book, based almost entirely on the accounts of survivors and the hundreds of messages sent out from the towers following the plane crashes, I came to the inescapable realization that probably all of the lives that were lost -- other than those killed immediately by the impact of the planes -- died because of the greed of the builders ("but if we put another stairway there, we will lose that much in rental revenues") and the hubris seen so excruciatingly in the sinking of the Titanic ("This ship is unsinkable!"; "These buildings will not fall; they were built to withstand the impact of an airplane").

The most salient fact I gleaned from this book is that almost none of the responders knew what had happened, or exactly what they were supposed to be doing. There was no communication between firefighters/police/Port Authorities. They didn't know a plane had crashed into the North tower; they didn't know another plane had crashed into the South tower; they didn't know when the South tower fell; they didn't know when the North tower fell either, but by then it was all over. The people in the towers following the deadly impact of the airplanes were in almost immediate contact with family members and friends via cell phone and regular phones and they were told what had happened, and what was happening. They knew. The so-called rescuers did not know. The cops in the helicopters flying above the carnage knew the towers were about to fall and gave notice after notice that unfortunately was never received by anyone. Anyone at all. No one knew. The police didn't know. The firemen didn't know. Only the people whose lives were in immediate danger knew and there was nothing they could do about it. The many calls they made to 911 were heartbreaking as they were told to stay where they were, that help was on the way. Some were told by 911 operators to get out, but no one knew what route to take. They had never had disaster instruction or drills. Some didn't want to risk their jobs by leaving their desks until someone in authority told them to.

Although this book is very readable, it was very hard to read, and even more horrible to realize that NO lessons were learned following the bomb explosion at the WTC in 1993. There was still NO communication between police and fire departments; indeed, they hate each other. It appears that not one single cop or fireman had the wherewithal to call home, or call someone with a TV or a radio who knew what was going on. They acted completely in confusion. They foolishly went up the stairs of the towers as the employees were making their way down. They didn't speak to one another as they passed each other. Bravery can sometimes be called foolhardy, and that is the best word I can come up with for those firefighters who died climbing into a building that was falling down around them. And they didn't even know it.

This is an important book and should be read by every American. Or, if no lessons are learned from this tragedy, maybe it is just worth the paper it is written on. Mankind fails so often it is discouraging and heartbrea