American Ground

An unrestricted look at Manhattan’s Ground Zero during the post-9/11 cleanup and those involved in the recovery efforts.

Selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Sun-Times

Within days after September 11, 2001, William Langewiesche had secured unique, unrestricted, around-the-clock access to the World Trade Center site. American Ground is a tour of this intense, ephemeral world and those who improvised the recovery effort day by day, and in the process reinvented themselves, discovering unknown strengths and weaknesses. In all of its aspects—emotionalism, impulsiveness, opportunism, territoriality, resourcefulness, and fundamental, cacophonous democracy—Langewiesche reveals the unbuilding to be uniquely American and oddly inspiring, an exercise in resilience and ingenuity in the face of disaster.

“A genuinely monumental story, told without melodrama, an intimate depiction of ordinary Americans reacting to grand-scale tragedy at their best-and sometimes their worst.” —Publishers Weekly

“One of the gifts of American Ground [is] truth, unclouded by sentiment. This book’s other gift is its capacity to surprise: it is a work of original reporting, and its pages are filled with astonishing observations.” —The New York Times Book Review

“One of the most compelling, dramatic, and uplifting pieces of writing you are likely ever to read. . . . American Ground will make you proud of the ground you walk on.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch