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The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted

At 8:46 am on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers-reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it-until now.

Of the millions of words written about this wrenching day, most were told from the outside looking in. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn have taken the opposite-and far more revealing-approach. Reported from the perspectives of those inside the towers, 102 Minutes captures the little-known stories of ordinary people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others. Beyond this stirring panorama stands investigative reporting of the first rank. An astounding number of people actually survived the plane impacts but were unable to escape, and the authors raise hard questions about building safety and tragic flaws in New York's emergency preparedness.

Dwyer and Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews with rescuers, thousands of pages of oral histories, and countless phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women-the nearly 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished-as they made 102 minutes count as never before.   102 Minutes is a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

From 102 Minutes : When he returned to 78, Greg Trapp saw a group of three Port Authority employees at work on the doors to the elevator where Tony Savas, a seventy-two-year-old structural inspector, was trapped. Trapp peered into the small gap and saw him, a man with thinning white hair, seemingly serene. One of the workers grabbed a metal easel, wedging the legs into the opening, trying to spread the doors from the bottom, where they seemed to have the greatest leverage. But their efforts had the opposite effect at the top of the doors, which seemed to pinch tighter. At that moment, John Griffin, who had recently started as the trade center's director of operations, came over to the elevator bank. At six feet, eight inches tall, Griffin had no problem reaching the top of the door to apply pressure as the others pushed from the bottom. The doors popped apart. Out came Savas, who seemed surprised to find Griffin, his new boss, involved in the rescue. Savas seemed exhilarated, possessed of a sudden burst of energy, rubbing his hands together, or so it seemed to Trapp. "Okay," Savas said. "What do you need me to do?" One of the Port Authority workers shook his head. "We just got you out-you need to leave the building." No, Savas insisted. He wanted to help. "I've got a second wind." Excerpted from 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer, Kevin Flynn All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

Two New York Times reporters take us inside the World Trade Center on 9/11 to give us a more capacious view of heroism. Dwyer (Subway Lives, 1991, etc.), who won a Pulitzer as part of the group that covered the 1993 WTC bombing, teamed with special-projects editor Flynn to interview scores of survivors and their families; the pair also studied e- and voice-mails from those inside. From these sources they've pieced together a powerful account of the disaster that hesitates neither to confer laurels nor point fingers. Their technique is not novel: we move around the buildings, getting to know some folks employed there and learning names and histories of rescue workers. We know the buildings will fall; those inside do not. (Most people fleeing the north tower didn't discover until they got outside that the south had fallen.) The authors lard their tale with surprising and alarming detail. The Marriott swimming pool caught fire. A man carried a disabled woman 54 floors down to the street. A fireman was killed by a falling human being. Molten aluminum from a melting airliner poured from an 80th-floor window. A dead cop's gun went off in the searing heat. Their account of the rescue efforts is equally disturbing. The various agencies were unable to communicate with one another; firemen carrying 57 pounds of equipment struggled slowly up stairs choked by smoke, heat, and debris; 911 dispatchers gave mixed messages to those inside; about a hundred firemen died in the north tower because they had stopped to rest on floor 19 and didn't hear the evacuation order. The authors conclude that most of the rescuing was done by civilians helping one another, not by policemen and firemen. Flynn and Dwyer do not seek to diminish what the safety officers did; instead, they celebrate the extraordinary capacities of ordinary folk. Swift, photographic prose defines the dimensions of hell--and of humanity. (8-page photo insert) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.