9/11: What to watch, read and listen to if you want to understand the world-changing attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon

Powerful stories help make sense of September 11.

Alexander Nazaryan
·Senior White House Correspondent
Updated ·6 min read
132
The twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11
The twin towers of the World Trade Center after the hijacked airliners crashed into them on Sept. 11, 2001. The suspected terrorist attack has caused the collapsed of both towers. (Henny Ray Abrams/AFP via Getty Images)

The 9/11 terrorist attacks not only killed 3,000 innocent people in New York and Washington, D.C., but also shattered the post-Cold War peace Americans had become accustomed to during the 1990s. Suddenly the U.S was plunged into a worldwide fight against terrorism. There were new security procedures at airports and office buildings. And, of course, new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Sept. 11 was one of those history-making events that we will always be grappling with. Below, some of the books, movies and podcasts that have done the most to bring clarity to the tragedy.

Read more via the New York Daily News: Biden to be a no-show at 9/11 ceremony in NYC amid feud with Adams over migrants

WHAT TO READ

The lower Manhattan skyline on 9/11
The lower Manhattan skyline on 9/11. (Robert Giroux/Getty Images)

“102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers”

This book by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn is arguably the best record of the attacks themselves. The title refers to the span of time between American Airlines 11 hitting the South Tower at 8:46 AM and 10:28 AM, when the North Tower collapsed.

Dwyer and Flynn recreate the scene in incredible detail as thousands of people in the World Trade Center complex tried to make sense of the morning’s events. Some rushed down to street level. Others called loved ones to assure them that they were OK.

The authors “unflinchingly place the reader in the minds and hearts of the people who actually confronted our worst fears,” James B. Stewart wrote in his New York Times review of the book. “I suspect that you, like me, will read this book in a single suspenseful sitting, even though we know the ending.”

Read more via Yahoo News: Remembering to remember the World Trade Center

“The Falling Man”

In his 2003 story for Esquire, Tom Junod tried to answer one of the enduring mysteries of the attacks: Who is depicted in the famous “Falling Man” photograph, which shows a figure plunging with almost haunting serenity from the top of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

The story is less about the answer than about the tragic plight of the people who, faced with infernal conditions inside the burning towers, jumped to their deaths.

“They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died,” Junod writes.

Read more on Yahoo News: Photographer behind 9/11 "Falling Man" retraces steps, recalls "unknown soldier"

Just blocks from the World Trade Center, a man who has just escaped from the falling debris of the burning towers enjoys a cigarette and a bottle of water, thankful to be alive
Just blocks from the World Trade Center, a man who has just escaped from the falling debris of the burning towers enjoys a cigarette and a bottle of water, thankful to be alive. (Getty)

“The Real Heroes Are Dead”

This powerful New Yorker story memorializes Rick Rescorla, a fascinating figure who died on 9/11 in the midst of trying to save people from the South Tower. As one of Rescorla’s friends from military service in Vietnam says, “There are certain men born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re surrounded with.” Beautifully written, this is a story filled with adventure, romance — and, yes, loss.

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People look at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, on the day of the 22nd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, in New York City, U.S., September 11, 2023. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
Visitors at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, on Monday. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

“What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind”

Jennifer Senior won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2021 article in the Atlantic about a 26-year-old Merrill Lynch employee who was attending an event at the Windows of the World restaurant atop the north tower when the building was struck by American Airlines 11.

Senior had known Bobby, who roomed with her brother at Princeton. “The boy was incandescent. When he smiled it looked for all the world like he’d swallowed the moon,” Senior writes.

The story is less about the attack itself but about the monumental grief that followed.

Read more via Associated Press: The U.S. marks 22 years since 9/11 with tributes and tears, from Ground Zero to Alaska

WHAT TO WATCH

‘9/11’

Jules and Gédéon Naudet filmed the attacks from the perspective of a lower Manhattan firefighting company.
Jules and Gédéon Naudet filmed the attacks from the perspective of a lower Manhattan firefighting company. (CBS News)

French documentarians Jules and Gédéon Naudet were in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, to shoot a documentary about a TriBeCa firehouse. That was not, however, the movie they wound up making.

Instead, the Naudets got unprecedented access to the New York Fire Department’s heroic response, which saw companies from across the city flock to the World Trade Centers. The documentary shows scenes of confusion, destruction and valor. Working in unimaginable conditions, “New York’s Bravest” ascended high into the towers to rescue as many civilians as they could.

In all, 343 members of the NYFD would die on 9/11. But, as Jim Dwyer would later write in the New York Times, “Thanks in large part to the Naudet film, the world witnessed the valor of emergency responders on 9/11.”

Read more via The Hill: Names of 43 firefighters added to World Trade Center Memorial Wall ahead of 9/11 anniversary

‘Zero Dark Thirty’

Locals ride past the demolished compound of Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Sept. 11, 2021.
Locals ride past the demolished compound of Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Sept. 11, 2021. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

On the evening of May 1, 2011, President Obama announced that 9/11 mastermind and al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden had been killed during an audacious raid inside Pakistan by members of the American military. It was a moment of closure many thought they would never see.

Kathryn Bigelow’s 2012 film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” starring Jessica Chastain as an intelligence analyst, dramatizes the search for Bin Laden, which took more than a decade, spanned continents and culminated in an audacious Navy SEALS assault on his walled compound.

Though some criticized the film as propaganda, it unflinchingly shows the cruelty of the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” also known as torture. As for the raid that took out the terrorist leader, Bigelow recreates it with heart-pounding skill.

Read more on Yahoo News: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ presents an unflinching look at the mission to find bin Laden, via Movie Talk

WHAT TO LISTEN TO

“9/12"

A New York City police officer at the Sept. 11 museum before the ceremony marking the 22nd anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks
A New York City police officer at the Sept. 11 museum prior to the ceremony marking the 22nd anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

In the years after the terrorist attacks, “9/12” became shorthand for life in a new world: a world of airport pat-downs, color-coded warnings and foreign wars. “9/12,” a popular podcast from Pineapple Street Studios, is about how people tried to make sense of the attacks. One episode is about the Onion, the satirical magazine wrestling with questions about humor in times of crisis; another is about a leader in Brooklyn’s Muslim community, which came under intense scrutiny after the attacks.

Read more on Yahoo News: 9/11: The 25 most powerful photos