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American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center | 
 enlarge | Author: William Langewiesche
Publisher: North Point Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 110903
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0865476756
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71044
EAN: 9780865476752
ASIN: 0865476756
Publication Date: September 11, 2003
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Pre-Order (0-0 Business Days)
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Product Description
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, round-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, a portrait of resilience and ingenuity in the face of disaster.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
Exception story about the unbuilding January 2, 2009
William Langewiesche was the only journalist who was at the 9/11 trade center site when they were unbuilding twin towers. American ground is his story about what happened in the months after the terrible attack on the towers.
The book is constructed as series of short stories all linked together to show the big picture. The focus in the book is on the actual unbuilding, the deconstruction of the "pile of rubble" that was left after two planes crashed in the WTC. It is also about the different groups that existed on the site, how they worked together and, especially, how they didn't. It is about how people automatically form tribes and create rituals. It is about being human.
The story starts with a couple of stories about the unbuilding process itself, a couple of months in the cleanup. After giving the reader some view of "the pile", the author moves back in time and constructs the WTC attack from different perspectives to show the different reactions and how different people got involved in the cleanup. From there, the story mainly continues chronologically. It describes the hard parts of the cleanup. There is a lot of focus on the arguments that happened between the different groups. It ends, as it should be, with the end of the unbuilding and showing how different people has been so involved... that they will actually miss the experience.
The existing amazon reviews are worth checking. Seldom do books get an either very positive or very negative rating. This is because the book covers some sensitive issues that happened -- looting by different parties and fighting between the tribes on the site. Whether these taboos are true or not, I found the book a easy ready. The book kept me reading.
I'd rate American Ground between four and five stars. I moved to the four because it IS a good book and I thoroughly did enjoy it. Though, it is not exceptional enough to warrant five stars. I would recommend this book to anyone who would want an insight in the unbuilding of the WTC.
 Worth a look November 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Considering the emotions of the various factions involved Langewiesche does the best he can in an impossible situation. He is forever tittering between the two sides wanting to tell the truth as he sees it and coming off too hard in the various points that he makes or careening to the other side and glossing over the truth.
We (most of the reading public at large) were not on the site nor did we have family involved either in the direct attack or in the cleanup so Langewiesche tries to tell a story about what it was like to be at ground zero for a few people a living history in the present tense. While I would say he did a good job someone who lost a family member might have a different perspective but he is absolutely correct that there is a fine line between respect for the dead it doesn't matter if it is civilian, NYPD, FDNY or Port Authority and an unhealthy cult of martyrdom.
Overall-Whatever the case and whatever your point of view the country is going to continue to grapple with these issues for years to come.
 Down In The Hole July 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
William Langewiesche's "American Ground" reads like something Edward R. Murrow might have written, if he had been born on the planet Vulcan and beamed down to the site of the World Trade Center right after the 9-11 attacks. Emotionally detached, with a faint hint of contempt for the heavy passions the attacks unleashed, it's not a book of comfort or pride, but of stubborn facts, nervelessly related.
For that some praise its bravery. Others say it reeks of disrespect, especially toward the members of the Fire Department of New York whose energetic response to the WTC fires cost them hundreds of comrades. To me, it's a book about a hole with a hole, that being Langewiesche's unwillingness to deal with the emotions of 9-11.
Reading the Amazon.com reviews, one might think the entire book is about a fire truck loaded with looted blue jeans, or the last words by one of the flight attendants on a hijacked aircraft. "American Ground" only mentions these things in passing, focusing instead on the massive clean-up of the ruined WTC site, a leaky cofferdam with rickety steel beams, potential Freon gas leakage, and a sometimes chaotic command structure worsened at times by "tribal" issues regarding jurisdiction and the handling of human remains.
What Langewiesche doesn't write about is the suffering of widows, the national mourning, episodes of bravery right after the attacks, or even the other two planes hijacked that day. Its subtitle: "Unbuilding The World Trade Center", is what it's about, not a metaphor for demythologizing the 9-11 attacks but the actual demolition work around the ruins.
I think Langewiesche missed an opportunity his access provided him, to use the clean-up as a framing device for getting more into the larger story of 9-11. To me, the clean-up of the World Trade Center by itself is just not that gripping. Langewiesche writes with energy and an eye for detail, but he doesn't seem to get much past the four or five guys in charge of the clean-up work, civil servants and construction guys of commendable energy but minimal charisma or vision.
To Langewiesche's firefighter critics, the anger of their response is something "American Ground" seems to prefigure in its account of how FDNY personnel made themselves unpopular with others at the clean-up site by languishing in bitter recrimination:
"Some had lost family when the Trade Center fell, and nearly all had lost friends. Their bereavement was real. Still, for nearly two months they had let their collective emotions run unchecked and they had been indulged and encouraged in this by society at large - the presumption being something like: 'It helps to cry.'"
For his part, Langewiesche is having none of it. It's probably this as much as that story about the fire truck with the jeans that contributes to the animus. Detractors might have more of a case if they didn't write with the same sense of entitlement-through-tragedy that Langewiesche notes clouded judgments and colored actions at the WTC site.
But Langewiesche's impartial tone lacks for something, too, more now than when it was first published in 2002, when emotions were so raw and overpowering that it was a relief reading a 9-11 account without them. Now it reads as a story about a giant hole, and the day-to-day decisions that were made to keep things running at a complicated worksite. The New York Times called the book "coldblooded" - cool-blooded might be a better term. But it's disengaging read from this remove in time, and I suspect it will be less essential reading in years to come.
 Just plain wrong August 26, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is inaccurate and just plain wrong. The author stated that an American Airlines flight attendant onboard doomed flight 11 called in to report the hijacking. That was the only correct fact he had. He goes on to say the flight attendant, Ms. Betty Ong, was speaking in "terrified tones, gasping for air". As we all heard a few years later when the tape of Ms. Ong final minutes were played at a congressional hearing, she was calm, composed, articulate and professional. Sadly, this rag was out for a few years before the truth came out. Mr. Langewiesche caused undue pain and heartache to Ms. Ong's family by his grossly inaccurate portrayal. Irresponsible and reprehensible "journalism". Shame on him.
one of the best 9/11 books February 17, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a beautifully written and utterly compelling book about the fall of the Twin Towers and their subsequent removal. Langewiesche captures the characters involved well, and he fills the book with fascinating details (like the guy who swims towards the towers when others are frantically catching ferries and boats to escape). A very fast read, this terrific work is part journalism and part history, and it's one of the best two or three books related to 9/11 that I've read.
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