9/11: 'Flashlight Worthy' Recommends 9 Unforgettable Books About September 11 (PHOTOS)

When I started Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations -- a website full of hundreds of lists of great books -- I thought to myself "This will be fun! Book Club Recommendations and Beach Reads."

Little did I realize how eager people would be to see book lists on heavier topics such as The Holocaust, cancer and of course... 9/11.
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Nine years after 9/11, a photo provides some peace

As someone who adopted New York as my home just two years before 9/11 -- and who watched the first tower fall with his own eyes -- I debated whether to create this book list. In the end though it deserves coverage like any other topic; ignoring it won't make it go away. I think that no matter your literal or emotional distance from Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 there's at least one book on this list for you.

Finally, while in my opinion these are some of the best books about 9/11, I'm sure there are dozens of excellent titles I've missed. If you know of any, drop by Flashlight Worthy and let me know what I've missed. 

'102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers' by Kevin Flynn and Jim Dwyer

As someone who's made his home in New York for the last 9 years -- and literally watched the first of the Twin Towers fall -- reading about 9/11 can be extremely difficult. This title -- a literal minute-by-minute account from the moment the first plane struck to the moment the 2nd tower fell -- strikes me as the perfect balance of dispassionate, inspiring and honest.

FIREHOUSE

This was a small but important book. One of last Halberstam wrote (or maybe the last?) before he died, it covers the lives and motivations of the firefighters from a particular Manhattan firehouse ... almost all of whom died on 9/11.

'American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center' by William Langewiesche

As a New Yorker who watched 9/11 happen out my window, I'm pretty sure this is the first 9/11 book I read. Why this book? Because it bypasses the human tragedy and focuses on the massive engineering task involved in cleaning up the debris and preparing the site for new buildings. It sounds a little dry I know, but it moves quickly -- the pages fly by.

'The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation' by Ernie Colon, Sid Jacobson

If you're like me, the thought of sitting down to read the 9/11 Commission report -- as important as it is -- makes your eyes glaze over. No matter how important the topic, let's face it, it's a government report.

Fortunately this graphic novel takes the most important parts of the report and sets them to a visual depiction (still, with plenty of words) that makes the entire report not only palatable, but downright gripping.

9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

For a government report, this "book" was a best-seller for months. I'll admit, I never read it -- I expect that as a New Yorker I already knew all I needed to know. But then I read the Graphic Novel adaptation and I now recognize that I was hasty. The report seems to read like a gripping thriller.

'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer

A brilliant story of how a child heals over a year's time after losing his father on 9/11. You'll likely shed a tear when it ends.

Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from The New York Times

Every day for the year or so following 9/11 the New York Times ran a photo and a brief biography/obituary of some of the individuals killed on 9/11. As you can imagine, this feature ran for some time before they worked their way through the thousands of victims. While I found the material a little dry, many New Yorkers were moved to tears on a daily basis.

For those looking for the human side of what happened, take a look at this book.

'The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11' by Lawrence Wright

The Looming Tower outlines the context of the attacks, from the point of view of Al Qaeda, and the important people within that group. The book provides a necessarily sweeping look at Islam and focuses on the difficult relationships between the FBI and the CIA, and how political infighting stifled knowledge sharing. Finally, the book brings to light the efforts of John P. O'Neill, who understood the nature of terrorism, long before it was manifested in the attacks of 9/11. Oh, and it won the Pulitzer Prize.

 Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey, illustrated by Maira Kalman

"WOW, WOW, WOW" is the best way to sum up how children feel about this fabulous children's book. One Flashlight Worthy fan emailed me and told me her son enjoyed it so much, she donated a copy to the library of his school.

Nine years after 9/11, a photo provides some peace

A Danish businessman took this photo of Gary Box as he rushed toward the attacks on the World Trade Center

New York-- Judson Box has never known exactly how his son, Gary, died on September 11, 2001. But an unexpected find nine years later has given him a glimpse into his son's final hours.

Gary, then 35, had been working as a firefighter in Brooklyn for roughly five years when the terrorists attacked. He did not speak to his father the day of the attack and his body was never recovered, leaving the circumstances of his death a mystery.

On September 11, 2009, Gary's sister, Christine, was visiting the Tribute Center when an employee asked her if she was looking for someone specifically. She mentioned her brother Gary, and the employee showed her to a picture of a firefighter in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel that had a caption bearing Gary's name.

But it was not Gary. It was a photo of Brian Bilcher, another member of Gary's fire squad who also perished on 9/11.
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The discovery compelled Gary's father to dig deeper, clinging to the possibility that there could be a similar picture of his son out there.

Box scoured photo archives of the National 9/11 Museum and the memorial's website, which allows users to upload photos from 9/11 directly to the site.

After searching one night for more than five hours, Box went to sleep, physically and emotionally exhausted. The next morning, his wife, Helen, called him into the living room as he was eating breakfast.

She showed him a photo of a firefighter running through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel toward the Towers alongside cars stuck in traffic.
This time, it was Gary.

"I was out of out control, emotionally," Box said. "Thanking God, being so happy that I had something to see."

Eager for more answers, Box contacted the National 9/11 Museum and Memorial in an attempt to track down the photographer. Several months later, the museum gave him the e-mail address of Erik Troelson, a Danish businessman who was stranded in the tunnel on his way to a meeting when he snapped the picture of Gary.

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Having entered the tunnel before the first plane hit, Troelson was unaware of the tragedy that was taking place outside.

"Suddenly, the girl in the car in front of us got out crying," he said. "Then we turned on the radio and heard the events as they unfolded."

Soon after, firetrucks started racing through the tunnel, but a car with blown-out tires jammed traffic, he said.

"Some of the bigger trucks got stuck, so the guys started walking briskly past us," Troelson said. "Gary Box was one of the guys."

Box and Troelson corresponded via e-mail for months, with Troelson doing his best to recall the day's timeline of events.

On Tuesday, the National 9/11 Museum and Memorial foundation arranged for a surprise rendezvous between the men at their annual fundraiser.

They shared an emotional moment onstage. Afterward, they spoke at length, with Box expressing his gratitude.

"I think I said about 300 times thank you and God bless you, that's all I could say," Box said. "I think I told him I love you, and I don't tell anybody that."

Nine years after September 11, Box said he still feels the pain of that day. He doesn't have the means to make large donations to the museum, but has sought to promote their cause through his story.

"We need that in this country because too many people forget," Box said of the museum.

"I wish everybody could get what I got."

 

9 11 photos

App Watch: Museum Looks at 9/11 Through Photos, Stories

 

When we at Digits saw the Explore 9/11 app in the iPhone App Store, we were initially taken aback. There’s a tendency to associate apps with fun, such that apps and 9/11 seem as though they should be diametrically opposed.

Local Projects

Although it’s anything but fun, Explore 9/11 is a fascinating look at how technology is changing the way historians find and share information. The app is offered by the National September 11 Memorial and Museum — and even before the museum is complete, it provides a look at history through the eyes of people touched by the event.
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“We understand it takes thousands of people to make history, and we are building a museum that acknowledges that,” said Jake Barton, founder of the media design firm Local Projects, which made the iPhone app and is a lead exhibition designer for the museum. “This is one thing that digital technology does exceptionally well, and it’s literally something you could not have approached 20 years ago, 50 years ago.”

The app, which is free, was released Aug. 26 and has been downloaded 100,000 times, Barton said.

Explore 9/11 includes a walking tour that takes people to seven locations around the World Trade Center site; each stop is accompanied by images, text and audio of interviews with eyewitnesses. There is also an interactive timeline of important 9/11 events.

But perhaps most interesting is the section that allows users to search for photos submitted to the museum’s Make History website. Users can see images that have been tagged with certain keywords or associated with various locations, from Downtown Manhattan to sites around the world that held memorials. The photos include those from tourists who visited the Trade Center years before the collapse, as well as those from anniversaries years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

On the newest version of the iPhone, users can even see photos in an “augmented reality” mode, in which images are overlaid on the camera view.

Barton said the museum encourages people to upload images and stories to the website of anything that has to do with the World Trade Center or Sept. 11 and its aftermath. “We’re looking for any and all materials,” he said. The images go into a database that is then accessible on the website and via the app.

Not everyone will be comfortable viewing the images on the site or in the app, but Barton said it’s important for the museum to solicit all it can in its efforts to record history. The site alerts users when they might be viewing content that has not yet been reviewed by the museum, and it encourages people to flag inappropriate stories and images. “It’s sensitive,” he said, “but we also want to have a message that the museum is an open space.”