We first read this reconstruction during the year following the 9/11 attacks. We found it difficult to read for its level of detail, its emotional content. Rereading it, we admire the clarity of structure, the way Maraniss bookends the piece … Read more
We liked the topic of this narrative, and we appreciated Laughlin’s clarity in laying out its themes. Through a narrative approach, she reveals the cultural and legal ramifications of Sophia Addo’s death on 9/11 and the ways in which her … Read more
Smith writes in a folksy, manly voice—as if he were saying, “gather round, boys, and I’ll tell you a story about daring, heroism and doing the right thing, even when the world seems bent on doing wrong.” It’s a captivating … Read more
This narrative succeeds because of the clarity with which it sequences events and because of its evocative detail. Its wrenching emotional content springs from such detail: the mother’s instructions for caring for her children, the pilot’s farm, the cell phone … Read more
This narrative of horror and escape is plainly and clearly told. Published the day after the 9/11 attacks on New York, it must have helped readers begin to hold the enormity of the event in their minds. Years later, its … Read more
The efficiency of this piece is remarkable. We thought the use of time and floor numbers a tight and evocative way of both structuring the piece and crystallizing a chaotic event. We found the opening lines particularly strong, along with … Read more
This piece mixes humor and gravity in telling the story of a man who narrowly escaped from the Marriott World Trade Center, a hotel that collapsed when the Twin Towers came down on 9/11. Its humor, we think, works only … Read more
Marilynn Rosenthal is on an obsessive quest for the truth. Trying to understand her son’s death, she even travels to the United Arab Emirates in search of the mother of one of her son’s murderers. We admired the evocative reconstructive … Read more
Trost’s own daughter is doing well, she reports, after years of innovative and experimental treatments for her combination of learning and behavioral problems. In this piece Trost returns to that world by following another little girl through a maze of … Read more
A woman on the verge of death is saved by a bone marrow transplant. She seeks out her donor after her recovery. They fall in love, and the rest is… a good story. Feeney goes after good detail in his … Read more
