Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: October 24, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 908882
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AMERICAN GROUND - one of the most controversial pieces of 9/11 publishing - is the result of Langewiesche's nine months in the Dantesque world of Ground Zero. With 'truth, unclouded by sentiment' (NEW YORK TIMES), he documented the lives of the engineers, labourers, rescue workers and city officials as they brought order to a land of chaos, anatomising the physical details of the collapse and revealing the contests of politics and personality that were its aftershock.
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Rated by buyers 
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Considering the emotions of the various factions involved Langewiesche does the best he can in an impossible situation. He is forever tittering between the two sides wanting to tell the truth as he sees it and coming off too hard in the various points that he makes or careening to the other side and glossing over the truth.
We (most of the reading public at large) were not on the site nor did we have family involved either in the direct attack or in the cleanup so Langewiesche tries to tell a story about what it was like to be at ground zero for a few people a living history in the present tense. While I would say he did a good job someone who lost a family member might have a different perspective but he is absolutely correct that there is a fine line between respect for the dead it doesn't matter if it is civilian, NYPD, FDNY or Port Authority and an unhealthy cult of martyrdom.
Overall-Whatever the case and whatever your point of view the country is going to continue to grapple with these issues for years to come.
Rated by buyers 
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William Langewiesche's "American Ground" reads like something Edward R. Murrow might have written, if he had been born on the planet Vulcan and beamed down to the site of the World Trade Center right after the 9-11 attacks. Emotionally detached, with a faint hint of contempt for the heavy passions the attacks unleashed, it's not a book of comfort or pride, but of stubborn facts, nervelessly related.
For that some praise its bravery. Others say it reeks of disrespect, especially toward the members of the Fire Department of New York whose energetic response to the WTC fires cost them hundreds of comrades. To me, it's a book about a hole with a hole, that being Langewiesche's unwillingness to deal with the emotions of 9-11.
Reading the Amazon.com reviews, one might think the entire book is about a fire truck loaded with looted blue jeans, or the last words by one of the flight attendants on a hijacked aircraft. "American Ground" only mentions these things in passing, focusing instead on the massive clean-up of the ruined WTC site, a leaky cofferdam with rickety steel beams, potential Freon gas leakage, and a sometimes chaotic command structure worsened at times by "tribal" issues regarding jurisdiction and the handling of human remains.
What Langewiesche doesn't write about is the suffering of widows, the national mourning, episodes of bravery right after the attacks, or even the other two planes hijacked that day. Its subtitle: "Unbuilding The World Trade Center", is what it's about, not a metaphor for demythologizing the 9-11 attacks but the actual demolition work around the ruins.
I think Langewiesche missed an opportunity his acess provided him, to use the clean-up as a framing device for getting more into the larger story of 9-11. To me, the clean-up of the World Trade Center by itself is just not that gripping. Langewiesche writes with energy and an eye for detail, but he doesn't seem to get much past the four or five guys in charge of the clean-up work, civil servants and construction guys of commendable energy but minimal charisma or vision.
To Langewiesche's firefighter critics, the anger of their response is something "American Ground" seems to prefigure in its account of how FDNY personnel made themselves unpopular with others at the clean-up site by languishing in bitter recrimination:
"Some had lost family when the Trade Center fell, and nearly all had lost friends. Their bereavement was real. Still, for nearly two months they had let their collective emotions run unchecked and they had been indulged and encouraged in this by society at large - the presumption being something like: 'It helps to cry.'"
For his part, Langewiesche is having none of it. It's probably this as much as that story about the fire truck with the jeans that contributes to the animus. Detractors might have more of a case if they didn't write with the same sense of entitlement-through-tragedy that Langewiesche notes clouded judgments and colored actions at the WTC site.
But Langewiesche's impartial tone lacks for something, too, more now than when it was very first published in 2002, when emotions were so raw and overpowering that it was a relief reading a 9-11 account without them. Now it reads as a story about a giant hole, and the day-to-day decisions that were made to keep things running at a complicated worksite. The New York Times called the book "coldblooded" - cool-blooded might be a better term. But it's disengaging read from this remove in time, and I suspect it will be less essential reading in years to come.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is inaccurate and just plain wrong. The author stated that an American Airlines flight attendant onboard doomed flight 11 called in to report the hijacking. That was the only correct fact he had. He goes on to say the flight attendant, Ms. Betty Ong, was speaking in "terrified tones, gasping for air". As we all heard a few years later when the tape of Ms. Ong final minutes were played at a congressional hearing, she was calm, composed, articulate and professional. Sadly, this rag was out for a few years before the truth came out. Mr. Langewiesche caused undue pain and heartache to Ms. Ong's family by his grossly inaccurate portrayal. Irresponsible and reprehensible "journalism". Shame on him.
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This is a beautifully written and utterly compelling book about the fall of the Twin Towers and their subsequent removal. Langewiesche captures the characters involved well, and he fills the book with fascinating details (like the guy who swims towards the towers when others are frantically catching ferries and boats to escape). A very fast read, this terrific work is part journalism and part history, and it's one of the best two or three books related to 9/11 that I've read.
Rated by buyers -
This book has been completely discredited piece by piece.
wtclivinghistory.org
Honestly, I don't know how Langewiesche lives with himself.
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