52 Books, Week 2: 102 Minutes
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain102 Minutes is a minute-by-minute first hand account (literally) of the bombing of the Twin Towers on September 11th. Taken from interviews, cell-phone calls, and 911 recordings, a running chronology is methodically described, and the book really provides an extremely harrowing (and extremely scary) account of what happens in a crisis. The book really doesn't try to describe a context for the terrorists actions, but strictly relies on personal narratives to take you inside two massive structures that happen to be on fire:
In New York, the two towers stood for 102 minutes--less than two hours--before they collapsed. That gives no hint of the morning's velocity. One plane crash. Sixteen minutes later, another plane crash. Twenty-five minutes later, word of a third plane approaching--untrue, but certainly not outside the freshly staked borders of the plausible. Then, about thirty minutes after that, the first building falls. Twenty-nine minute later, it was over. It was as if a car going ninety miles per hour were making a ninety degree turn every few minutes. Each moment brought fresh demans, fresh hell.The lack of coordination and lack of planning (between the police, fire department, and the port authority) are considered the villians in this account, and its interesting that the book didn't lay more blame at the feet of the perpetrators of the attack.
I remember going into the World Trade Center during my short time in New York, and one of the things that struck me during this particular reading, is trying to think about what I would do in this exact situtation. Its easy to say that you would evacuate immediately, etc. etc, but this book at least begs the question. Amazingly, I was scheduled to interview at an investment bank in New York on September 11th (and was supposed to stay at the Marriott World Trade Center hotel), but for some reason or another the session got postponed.
The book was definitely sad. Lots of heroes and bad situations, so if you're looking for a pick me up, I probably wouldn't recommend this one.
Labels: 52 Books
posted by The Generalist at 12:30 PM
5 Comments:
Let me be clear: I have problems with the Twain quote only. The Twain quote is, to me, racially biased in ways that attribute value to literate people and devalue those who are non-literate according to social standards. When one takes the time to truly reflect on those words, she must ask who were the people in Twain's time that could not read? (mostly blacks and poor whites)
I sincerely hope that this literacy venture is not sought to prove superiority over semi- and non-literate folks in hopes of maintaining or establishing a higher sense of value, merit, importance, and worth.
Best of luck to you...
Lol, na i wasn't trying to exert my dominance over non-literate people either historically or contemporarily. It's a farily controversial quote, and for someone reason it resonated with me (maybe because of my repressed desire to dominate non-literate people)
Why I'm Doing This
I'll probably remain anonymous until Feb. but I was laughing at the last two comments from 'becomingme' and the generalist. Then I just so happened to check 'becomingme's' user stats and I clicked on the story that she has linked to her stats. So I started reading the little story and realized that this was BECOMING a bit too 'interesting' for ME to continue reading at work and have someone look over my shoulder and be like "This dude has issues" It was at that point that I actually looked at the pictures that surrounded the story and began to laugh...If you check it out, you'll know what I mean.
Anony--you don't like my pictures...I thought that there were fresh and classy. I'm assuming you're talking about the banner. If you no likey, I will change, yes? Yes.
There is nothing to dislike => - I love double negatives - about your banner becomingme. It just caught me by surprise. It was like one of those moments when you are in a public setting with your friends and someone flashes you. It just takes you a second to digest what happened. Unless you are, of course, like one of the hosts who I am sure frequently receive flashes from even the most stunning of models.
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