5 Books You Can Read to Honor the Heroes of 9/11

In this pick by Glenn Corbett, associate professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York Times journalists Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn reconstruct the harrowing 102 minutes from when American Airlines Flight 11 shot into the World Trade Center’s North Tower to the collapse of both buildings. Through hundreds of interviews with survivors and witnesses—and thousands of pages of emergency radio transcripts—a collective portrait of heroism emerges. But it comes against a backdrop of systemic failures—including flawed building codes that made the towers less fire resistant than the city’s earlier skyscrapers. Individual stories stand out, including that of Joseph Pfeifer, the first FDNY chief to arrive at the scene, and FDNY Captain William Burke Jr., who ordered his company to evacuate but remained behind with wheelchair-bound Ed Beyea on the North Tower’s 27th floor.

As a Boston Globe reporter, Mitchell Zuckoff wrote significant portions of the paper’s 9/11 coverage, including “Six Lives,” which wove together the experiences of six people connected to the day’s tragedies. In Fall and Rise, he expands that narrative to connect dozens more. Nearly a third of the book is devoted to the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 77—individuals whose stories have long been overshadowed by those of Flight 93. Recommended by Jan Ramirez, chief curator of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for its focus on the human experience, the book captures their heroism with vivid immediacy. One of the most chilling moments is flight attendant Amy Sweeney’s final words seconds before Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. “Something is wrong. We’re in a rapid descent… We are all over the place,” she says. “We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low! Oh my God!—We are way too low!”

This oral history, another pick by Ramirez, draws on nearly 500 voices to capture the horror of the day as it unfolded—from a secret bunker beneath the White House to the smoldering towers. Garrett Graff, a former editor of POLITICO Magazine, gives particular weight to the rescue workers. Police officers, firefighters, U.S. Coast Guard crews and paramedics all share testimonies that create a collective memory of courage amid the choking dust of the pile. One unforgettable account comes from William Jimeno, a Port Authority Police Department officer trapped in the rubble with his colleagues, clinging to life and to one another: “We kept going back and forth, trying to keep each other going. I would yell at the sergeant if I heard him fading away; he would yell at me if I was fading away.”

Recommended by Donna Gibson, executive director of Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, Among the Heroes reconstructs the dramatic moments of courage aboard the one hijacked plane on September 11, 2001, that never reached its intended target—most likely the U.S. Capitol or White House. Longman (also known for The Girls of Summer, about the U.S. women’s world cup team) portrays the passengers and crew of United Flight 93, traveling from Newark to San Francisco, not as passive victims but as heroes who banded together in an act of extraordinary defiance. The book’s most powerful moments come through preserved phone calls from the plane, including passenger Todd Beamer’s recitation of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd…”), followed by his now-famous rallying cry: “Let’s roll!”

Selected by Dr. Cynthia M. Otto, a veterinarian who cared for the working dogs at Ground Zero and who later founded the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, Dog Heroes of September 11th honors the canine teams who searched tirelessly at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Shanksville, and the Fresh Kills landfill—where remains from the fallen towers were transported. Profiling 80 dogs and their handlers, Bauer captures their extraordinary dedication. They scaled seven-story mountains of debris, navigated twisted steel, and endured 12-hour shifts in search of survivors. Among them were Anna, a German shepherd who with handler Sarah Atlas recovered two fallen firefighters, and Bear, a Labrador retriever who with John Gilkey identified 40 cadaver sites and comforted rescuers, once falling asleep in a firefighter’s lap.