Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001
Mitchell Fink, formerNew York Daily Newsgossip columnist, teamed with wife Lois Mathias to gather the first-person accounts of World Trade Center office workers, Pentagon employees, rescue workers, witnesses, and others who lived through the events of September 11. And while Fink does have a background in news reporting, his years plying the gossip trade actually serve him well inNever Forget. Part of the role of the gossipmonger, after all, is to reveal the human sides of public figures, to find the ways in which the famous are just like regular people. Fink and Mathias's interview subjects tell vivid details of what they experienced, forming fascinating, horrifying, and uplifting stories that provide a human face to the magnitude of that day's events. The book is not organized particularly clearly and, between sections, the authors unnecessarily underscore the stories with short inspirational messages rather than let their subjects' experiences do the talking. But the sheer force of the stories themselves is undeniable: the NYPD Chief of Police relates the experience of watching one of the towers collapse, a preschool teacher tells of the three days she spent searching in vain for her fiancé, an 89-year-old man describes his trip down 88 flights of stairs. After reading all of these stories, the reader may be struck with not only the enormity of what happened, but also a glimpse into the real impact it had on the people who lived through it.--John Moe