Not only did I know this book's story and ending before I started, but it was my second reading of "102 Minutes." Still riveting and emotionally draining, ten years have not diluted the impact.

Are there any lessons to be learned? Have changes been made? The book is a good counterpart to the 9/11 Commission Report.

The chaos and lack of coordinated effort and communication between different agencies in the city and throughout the nation was staggering, as the Commission also concluded. The details in this minute by minute recounting of that morning in Lower Manhattan only serve to reinforce the impact of those conclusions.

Who is in charge today, what is the chain of command, how will those involved find out what's going on and what to do? Probably, once again, from their cell phones and computers (if they work).

Has safety and the well being of humans started to triumph profit? Can you believe I'm even bothering to ask that question? The World Trade Center was an accident waiting to happen. The building code is still geared to profit, not safety. And they are building yet another building too large to evacuate or defend from disaster.

I guess one should expect businesses to care about money before human life, safety, well-being, but the hope in a democracy is that government and the laws it enacts will look out for its citizens and equalize the equation of profit and people a bit. Instead they seem to want to govern us "like a business", to treat us like products. Money and more money for the lucky few, too bad for the rest of us, especially if we are not profitable enough.

And yet the book was not entirely depressing. The popular press made heroes of the firemen, the police, and certainly some cut through the chaos and did amazing things. But many "ordinary people"--the workers in the buildings, the real heart of its existence--performed heroically way beyond the call of duty, without thought of their own safety or what might be in it for them, putting others first. As "102 Minutes" makes clear, we don't have to invent heroes--they are right next to us, they can even BE us. Integrity, doing the right thing, helping others, is not for sale.

Every decision, every minute, every little thing was important to the survival of each person who was in, or might have been working or visiting, Lower Manhattan and the WTC on September 11, 2001. Each action was magnified and rippled out to push against other actions and people. Decisions made years, decades, before collided with those made that day.

For a few days, maybe even weeks, everyone seemed to remember that, and lived and acted with a little more consciousness of their connection. Ten years later, unfortunately, our leadership, and most of the rest of us, have lost that thread.