Review: Thoughtful, important perspective
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 29, 2012
I have read many accounts of 9/11 from different perspectives. I found this work to be perhaps the most compelling look at 9/11 for two reasons. One, it comes from the perspective of a visitor to America during that terrible week. One who traveled it's breadth meeting and talking with people, observing the nation as a visitor to it. It is told with a kind of compassionate warmth of someone who cares about people. Someone who cares without any political agenda, but rather the very human capacity to want to understand the events of 9/11 in a personal way. In very real and honest ways.Secondly, it points to some of the deeper consequences of trauma, grief and loss which are hardly dealt with in our culture. At least in any meaningful way. It left me wanting to hear more. A perspective now, slightly more than a decade after the events of 9/11, from a neighbor to our North.A lot has happened since then and a lot of it was in reaction to that attack. I can't help but wonder what the author thinks of America now since 9/11 - since his road trip. The insights he gleaned from visiting ground zero and his observations of the people and places around the city are powerful, thought provoking and I think essential in our understanding of the wounds that many of us still carry. I wonder, very much, what his thoughts are today when he reflects back on that road trip and all the events which have followed. Hopefully there will be a subsequent book on the subject, but for now this short autobiographical seems to me essential reading for all Americans. We should listen closely to what the author is saying and be thankful for his perspective.