What We Saw
The Events of September 11, 2001, in Words, Pictur
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
We each remember where we were, what we thought, what we felt, what we heard, and especially what we saw on September 11, 2001.
In words, images, and nearly two hours of video, What We Saw captures those moments. Now, in this tenth anniversary edition, Joe Klein delivers an introspective and intimate look at those catastrophic events—along with what we have learned, and how we have changed, since that fateful date.
As the world came to a halt that September morning, CBS News journalists worked tirelessly to provide detailed, accurate coverage, from the first interviews with eyewitnesses to a plane crashing into Tower 1 of the World Trade Center to the Towers of Light tribute six months later. In addition to the events that shook America’s biggest city and its capital, What We Saw documents the tragedies that occurred elsewhere: from the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to the waves of pain that moved across a New Jersey commuter town.
Among the contributors are Jules Naudet, a French filmmaker who was working on a documentary about New York City firefighters when his subjects were called into service; Anna Quindlen, whose thoughts turn to a young family aboard United Airlines Flight 175; David Grann, who captures the hopelessness felt by families searching for missing loved ones; and CBS’s Steve Kroft, who watched a small investment firm that lost dozens of employees slowly pull itself up from despair.
In What We Saw, each moment of September 11 and its aftermath is portrayed with candor and honesty by the CBS News correspondents, photographers, camera operators, and journalists who were there. This is an invaluable documentary of a day that forever altered our world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Assembled chronologically, this anthology of article excerpts, essays and personal narratives econstructs the events of September 11 17 in words and pictures. Packaged with the book is a DVD, a document of events extracted from the CBS News Archives. The DVD opens with Dan Rather and a CBS News special report, including clips of Bryant Gumbel on the phone with eyewitnesses five minutes after the first crash. Among the dedicated CBS reporters covering the tragedy was Carol Marin, who fled the WTC collapse and continued uptown to the CBS News studio, still covered in dust and debris when she went on the air with Rather. Equally memorable is Ed Bradley's lengthy video coverage of the "thousands of volunteers who were drawn by an overwhelming urge to help" in the rescue efforts. Several short pieces in the book are by CBS correspondents, and these abbreviated accounts, edited down and rewritten, are weak alongside the same material on the DVD. The articles and excerpts from magazines and newspapers include standout selections by Anna Quindlen, Pete Hamill and David Grann. David Letterman's September 17 talk with a weeping Dan Rather and the Naudet brothers' acclaimed September 11 documentary were peaks of the CBS coverage, both with huge ratings, and many will be disappointed by their conspicuous absence from this DVD.
