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Long Shadow: The Lingering Questions of 9/11

PODCAST

#1 Apple History Podcast
“Rigorous, authoritative and an electrifying listen.” — The Financial Times

Many Americans watched the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 unfold right before our eyes. What happened on 9/11 and how it changed our world is the most important story of the modern age. It’s the hinge on which so much changed. But in the years since the history we’ve come to tell of that day is incomplete—and sometimes wrong.

Hosted by journalist Garrett Graff, author of the bestselling book THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY: AN ORAL HISTORY OF 9/11, “Long Shadow” examines the questions that linger two decades later and the enduring mysteries that still surround 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. This is a different history of September 11th than you likely remember. But it’s one that will help you make sense of the world the attacks left behind.

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THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY

An Oral History of 9/11

“Harrowing and powerful . . . This vivid, moving work is painful to read but honors both those who died and those who survived that awful day.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The award-winning journalist and author of Raven Rock shares the first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001—a panoramic narrative woven from hundreds of interviews with government officials, first responders, survivors, friends, and family members.

The #1 National Bestseller
New York Times Bestseller and Wall Street Journal Bestseller
The 2020 Audie Winner — “Audiobook of the Year”
“Incredibly evocative and compelling” — The Washington Post
“Remarkable … a priceless civic gift.” — The Wall Street Journal
“The most moving and chilling oral history you will read.” — The Times (UK)
“History at its most immediate and moving” — Jon Meacham

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FEATURED ARTICLES

THE ATLANTIC

On 9/11, Luck Meant Everything

When the terrorist attacks happened, trivial decisions spared people’s lives—or sealed their fate.

On that bright-blue morning 20 years ago, Coast Guard lieutenant Michael Day was at his office on Staten Island, looking out over lower Manhattan. Day was a relatively junior officer whose job entailed safety and navigation oversight of the New York waterways, helping to coordinate anchorages and channel markers. He also dealt with all the odd questions that crop up in the congested rivers and harbor of one of the largest cities in the world, like charity swims and the Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks. The Coast Guard had negotiated with the Mets when their new stadium lights blinded mariners, and had to tell David Letterman that, no, he could not launch watermelons across the Hudson toward New Jersey. Read more…

POLITICO MAGAZINE

The World Trade Towers Collapsed on Will Jimeno. How Did He Survive?

The Port Authority police officer spent 13 hours trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers before he was rescued. But the most remarkable thing might be what happened afterward.

The oddest thing about being trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center was that Will Jimeno didn’t break any bones. The Port Authority police officer had 220 stories of the World Trade Center fall on top of him — all of both towers, first the south, then the north — a violence of unimaginable scale, velocity and intensity, one that killed three of the other officers he’d been standing with moments earlier, and entombing him and his surviving sergeant amid concrete and rock for hours on Sept. 11, 2001. But weeks later, when he was recovering, still hospitalized, covered in bandages and tubes, having flatlined twice on the operating table, his sister asked the doctors: “How many bones did he break?” Read more…

THE ATLANTIC

After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong

A mission to rid the world of “terror” and “evil” led America in tragic directions.

On the friday after 9/11, President George W. Bush visited the New York City site that the world would come to know as Ground Zero. After rescue workers shouted that they couldn’t hear him as he spoke to them through a bullhorn, he turned toward them and ad-libbed. “I can hear you,” he shouted. “The whole world hears you, and when we find these people who knocked these buildings down, they’ll hear all of us soon.” Everybody roared. At a prayer service later that day, he outlined the clear objective of the task ahead: “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”. Read more…

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

Escape From New York

The great maritime rescue of lower Manhattan on 9/11.

ON THE MORNING of December 30, the day after Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering in the 2016 US election, Tillmann Werner was sitting down to breakfast in Bonn, Germany. He spread some jam on a slice of rye bread, poured himself a cup of coffee, and settled in to check Twitter at his dining room table. Read more…

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

9/11 and the Rise of the New Conspiracy Theorists

The persistence of the fringe movement that blames the U.S. government for the 2001 terrorist attacks suggests that QAnon and other digital-age conspiracists may be around for a while

The leaders of the 9/11 Commission wanted to avoid the fate of the Warren Commission. For decades, ambiguities in the report on President John Kennedy’s assassination had offered fuel for wild speculation about what had actually happened. “It is extremely difficult to dislodge or anticipate conspiracy theories once they start,” said Jamie Gorelick, a member of the 9/11 Commission. The commission’s 2004 report was written with such rigor, empirical clarity and narrative power in part to deflate the conspiracy theories already starting to swirl around al Qaeda’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. “You could see this happening,” said Ms. Gorelick. Read more…