Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11: A gripping biography of triumph over tragedy

by Mitchell Zuckoff

FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES AFTER TAKEOFF, CARRYING EIGHTY-SEVEN hostages, five tons of cargo, ten thousand gallons of fuel, and five terrorists, American Airlines Flight 11 completed its forced conversion from a passenger jet into a 283,600-pound guided missile. Its nose aimed slightly downward, its right wing tipped upward, the silver Boeing 767 with red, white, and blue stripes and “AA” on its tail smashed into the north face of the North Tower at 8:46:40 a.m. Its violent arrival carved an airplane-shaped gash in the steel and glass that stretched at an angle from the 93rd to the 99th floor. As it entered the building, what remained of Flight 11 sliced through thirty-five exterior steel columns and heavily damaged two more. It severed six core columns and damaged three others. It shattered at least 166 windows. It broke the concrete floor slabs of the 95th and 96th floors eighty feet deep into the building. It launched a fusillade of flying debris that knocked or scraped fire-retarding insulation from forty-three core columns. It stripped the insulation from sixty thousand square feet of steel floor supports over several floors. It severed pipes that fed water into the fire sprinkler system. It stopped elevators in motion and cut off elevator service to at least the sixty upper stories. It sent glass and metal and office contents and body parts raining down a thousand feet to the plaza and the streets below. It altered the path of American and world history. All that damage too...