Customer Reviews

Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is book is not easy to read. It will pound your heart and make you broken. When the two airplanes fatally hit the World Trade Center twin tower at 8:48 am and 9:03 am, history and landscape of this country changed eternally. The assasination of beloved president John F. Kennedy defined the baby boomer generation. September 11 strikes all of us and sadly defines our current generation with the same caliber. Dennis Smith was among the first crew who arrived at ground zero and participated in the rescue efforts. Smith is a retired firefighter who had been with the New York Fire Department for 18 years. He has written a vivid and stunning account on the day-by-day rescue efforts at ground zero immediately after the attack. Smith himself attended the injured and sifted through deris and rubbles for signs of life. The book serves as a testimony as well as an honorable salutation to the policemen and firefighters who sacrificed their lives to the country. Without these heroes, the casualties could have soared as high as 6000. Smith's account is much needed but hard for anyone to take. The account is needed so we, as Americans, can once again be unified and be bold against terrorism. Shall the nation not come close and unify, those who have fought bravely up in the front, all the firefighters and policeman, they would have died for nothing. Smith's report from the ground zero weaves together his own daily accounts, stories from other rescue members, and families that lost their loved ones on September 11. This book fills with passion, tears, boldness, and a call for Americans to unified. May God bless America. United We Can Stand.

"Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center" by Dennis Smith provides a poetic-journalistic look at a tragedy which still continues to shake America. You'll find the book stronger in intensity than any photographic collection of September 11, 2001.

His descriptions are more than photo-realistic versions of what he saw, but brings forth the anguish and passion, and the smell of wet ash and burning debris. Smith manages to connect with the reader beyond the hype and politics. You will not be able to read this unaffected.

The people in the high-rises, on the planes, and the policemen and fireman all were real people. Even the foolish young men who hijacked the planes, the ones who believe Bin Laden... all real people who died pointlessly. Smith draws out the real, draws out the essence as well as the actual accounts of the awful events.

I fully recommend "Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center" by Dennis Smith.

Anthony Trendl

I was very much against picking up any books about the events of September 11th, due to the fact that I felt most would just be the same stuff I had read online and in magazines, but this book really was a wonderful and tough read.

Dennis Smith is a amazing storyteller. He went and asked many of the firefighters who had survived the attacks to describe the events to him and some of the storys that were told were very tear-jerking and tough to read. Some of the storys that the firefighters told will be stuck in my head forever.

I loved how he did the first part of the book with the storys of the firefighters and there storys and then how in the second half of the book he described the days and weeks following the events. All the firehouses he visited and the time he spent at Ground Zero helping to find fallen brothers and other people who died in this attack and also the funnerals and memorials he went to for some of the firefighters.

I don't think there will be many books about Sept 11th that will live up to this one. This one was beautiful and sad and many other things all together in one book.

Who among us will ever forget the gut-wrenching tragedy of September 11, 2001. It does not matter what little corner of the world you may be living in, the event remains a memory etched deep within our minds. It was, and still is a soul-searching experience for those rescue workers who were there at the time and those who are today still working amidst the ruins. If you are looking for a quick, easy read, this book will not be for you. The stories told here will tug at your heart, often leaving the reader too overwhelmed with emotion to continue reading the book at one sitting. The book is written by a former firefighter who knows first hand of pain, suffering, hope, strength, dispair and courage.

There are many books in print of that tragic day, but none touched me in such a deep and profound way as this one. While it is not an easy book to read, it is one you will want to hold onto and keep for future generations, for this horrendous event will remain an eternal memory. It is an account of heartbreak, devastation, pain and suffering in the wake of terrorism.

The mental images invoked by Chief Smith's writing are strong, and at times troubling. I was forced to put the report aside several times - the images became overwhelming, only to find I needed to pick the book up again minutes later. I could not abandon this chronicle for long, and I certainly did not peruse it leisurely - I devoured the pages frantically, charging through the torrent of emotions of that extraordinary day.

The narrative, with its descriptive elements of the scene mingled with the emotional elements of the survivor's stories needed only a voice-over by Walter Cronkite: "And you were there".

An exceptional volume, and one that does justice to the collective memories of September 11th, 2001.

If you really want to know what it was like there between West and Church streets in Lower Manhattan back in September, October, buy this book. I have had the pleasure of working with Mr. Smith a few times over the years and am always pleased with his work. I also was pleased to see so many names of people I knew. Having spent a number of days working at the WTC site in September, and continuing to go back on occassion, THIS will be the book I will tell all my friends to get so they can better understand.

Prior to this book, Dennis Smith was a fabulous writer and editor of Firehouse Magazine. He is a firefighter and was on the scene soon after the WTC Towers collapsed. He knew many of the men who were killed, and he knows many of the living. He knew Chief Ganci and Father Mychal Judge. He also knows the politicians. What Mr. Smith has done is put together a masterpiece of grief. He has taken the firefighters' own words to tell their stories and he has connected the stories, so for instance, if one firefighter talks about Fireman X being lost in the collapse, he then finds another firefighter who was with that fireman, or who last saw him.
I wanted to read a book about the WTC without rubbernecking. Although many books have been published in the months following the attack, this is without a doubt, the definative book. The grief and suffering of the families is so great, that I was not able to read this book for more than 20 pages at a time, without taking a long break to cry for the firefighters, police, EMS workers and their families. Mr. Smith points out to the lay person that Duty and Sacrifice come together for these men women, that the firefighters never questioned their duty. That the surviving firefighters would go into another tower again, after all they say, you cannot leave people in a building who need help, explains their heart and soul. After reading this book, I do not believe that you will ever view a firefighter, policeman or EMS worker the same. There are some very graphic scenes in this book about body parts and this book is not for the squemish. It presents ground zero from the day of the attack until months after and it will probably been one of the books that historians will look to when remembering this tragic and awful attack.

Dennis Smith, author and retired firefighter, seeing the reports of the attack on the World Trade Center, put on his old fireman clothes, and reported for rescue duty. Throughout the days that followed, he worked tirelessly at the site, and at various charities. Then, using his abilities as a writer, he sat down to tell the story of September 11th, and the three following months, from the view of the New York City firefighters.

Brimming with first-hand accounts of firefighters who were involved, he tells the story from every angle. There are stories from rescue workers who saw it all, and even from some who were inside the buildings and actually survived. The stories are all wonderfully moving, and will bring that day back to you, alive as never before.

This book is incredibly moving. Like so many Americans, that day is etched clearly upon my mind. Mr. Smith's book brought back so many memories, and told me so much that I didn't know. He is an excellent author, and I found this book more moving than any I have read in a long time. This is a great book, one I highly recommend to everyone who is interested in the World Trade Center attack.

This book is an absolutely unsentimental rememberance and meditation on the attack on the World Trade Center which occurred on September 11th. Mr. Smith is not politicizing or theologizing, two things which are all too easy to do in a situation - and recollection - such as this. As an ex-firefighter, Dennis Smith is recording the events of the attack and the recovery in order that this timeline might be recorded into history, a document which will survive the temporal nature of news broadcasts and obituary columns. He has also very effectively eulogized the fallen victims of this horrendous crime without ever lowering a heavy hand. Their stories and portraits are enough; Smith feels this as keenly as he knows it, and hs almost laconic style portrays the subject with a distilled clarity we would not expect from writing on this subject, from someone so close to it.

The first half of the book is the story - most of the time in their own words - of the rescue workers themselves on the Morning of September 11th. The second half is a day-by-day record of the rescue efforts for approximately three months following. This is a book of on-the-ground, you-are-there style journalism, not a reporter's remotely administered conclusions and hearsay, and as such, it will be a lasting and important document in the coming flurry of books about the attacks of September 11th.

Very highly recommended.

By now it would be easy to expect a book with such a title to be an exploitative effort to mine our sentimental attachments to the events of last September, yet this slim volume is hardly that. Written by a career fireman who walked among those who fought the fire and who were lost, it really is a marvelous testament ot those who risked their lives for others. Far from being a rip-off, it is written as a tribute to those who walked among the ruins and either lived or died.

It is full of anecdotal information about many of those who perished, but is also filled with descriptions of survivors who were ordinary people illustrating uncommon courage and compassion. Go get it and read it, but find a quiet private corner first. And bring the kleenex. Tears will flow, and you will still be glad that you read it. Enjoy!