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 calls home.
Unlike many of the early 9/11 reconstructions, Zuckoff also follows one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, as he makes his way to join, as Zuckoff puts it, the other characters and “their meeting place and history.” We found Atta’s inclusion effective.
Read “Reliving the Morning of Death,” by Mitchell Zuckoff