9/11 Remembered

ONE DAY, ONE YEAR, MORE THAN A HUNDRED BOOKS

With the publication of nearly 150 books related to September 11, last year's news begins passing into history. Before you know it there will be 9/11 buffs. On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald and 9/11 (HarperCollins) takes you into the storm, chronicling the tragedy of a firm that was located on the top floors of the World Trade Center's north tower. The book was written by company chairman Howard Lutnick and reporter-novelist Tom Barbash. William Langewiesche'sAmerican Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) delves into the makeshift community that formed in the rubble of Lower Manhattan. Langewiesche, a pilot turned ace Atlantic Monthly reporter, worked alongside his subjects for five months. In Father Mike (Thomas Dunne Books), New York Daily News columnist Michael Daly focuses on one man: Mychal Judge, a priest who lived and worked among countless New York Fire Department families—and who died doing his job at Ground Zero. Long before al-Qaeda paid its visit, Terry Golway, a New York Observer writer who comes from a family of firefighters, was hard at work on So Others Might Live: A History of New York's Bravest—The FDNY from 1700 to the Present (Basic Books). Sadly, September 11 gave the F.D.N.Y. its most heroic moment, which Golway captures perfectly. This is a book that sits nicely on the shelf alongside David Halberstam's Firehouse (Hyperion). Syndicated columnist George Will has decided it's time for the seventh collection of his columns, With a Happy Eye, but... America and the World, 1997-2002 (Free Press). And Alan Dershowitz leaps back into the fray eight years after O.J. with Why Terrorism Works (Yale). Think he might plug it on cable?

JIM WINDOLF