 |
|
|
|
|
|
| From: Andrae Garavito |
| Customer Review |
| If you're looking for an excellent book about 9/11, then look no further. This book will give the reader a clear idea of what it must've been like to actually be there in Manhatten and see the carnage first-hand. Read the true stories of men & women who experienced 9/11 and learn about how it has changed their lives forever. See the horrors from their perspective; the fires, the smoke, the debris, the falling bodies, the pandemonium, the collapse the the towers, and the aftermath. This book is a must have. |
Read more:
|
|
| From: Tom Kean |
| Chairman 9/11 Commission |
| I hope this book remains in print for a very long time to come, because everyone should read it. |
Read more:
|
|
| From: William F. Buckley, Jr |
|
| This volume defends the understanding, as also the horror, of that day. We are indebted for the effort and acuity. |
Read more:
|
|
| From: Bill Baroni |
| NJ State Assembly |
| I believe that, years from now, two documents will survive as the recognized history of September 11th: the 9/11 Commission Report and Damon DiMarco's incredible oral history. |
Read more:
|
|
| From: The Richmond Post |
| Dispatch |
| This is oral history at its best |
Read more:
|
|
| From: Owen Philips |
| Customer Review |
| I was wondering when somebody was going to put something out about this tragedy that wasn't a self-serving glorification or woe-is-us pablum. This book tells it like it was, in the hours and days after this horrible event, in the words of the people who were there, and elsewhere. DiMarco has done an incredible job of deciding what to include in this as each first person account is different, with different emotions and reasons for being. Some people you want to smack in the head for some of the things they say, like this one NY detective who talks about the ways of the street and how to get suspected terrorists to talk and how much he thinks the FBI is useless, and yet you also side with him because he seems to get results-- in his own limited world-view scope. Others break your heart with their stories of loss-- like the lead singer of the New York band The Bogmen whose wife Kristy perished in the Towers, and who years earlier had started the charity Secret Smiles,(to which DiMarco has pledged a portion of the royalties) and the husband of a flight attendant who was on the plane that went down in PA. He tells an incredible story of his incredibly life-loving wife-- you get to know her in his few page contribution that you end up crying your eyes out when it's finally revealed what he goes through when her fate is revealed. And that's predominantly what it's like to read Tower Stories. My wife is a pretty hard-nosed New Yorker but she spent an entire night sobbing and laughing while reading this book. It really captures the history of that horrible day as best I can tell, at least from what I imagine. Like the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Tom Kean says in the foreword, this book continues the tradition of The Grapes of Wrath and The Disinherited and most of Stud's Terkel's work in that it creates a time-capsule for all eternity. Thankfully someone has done it. Let's just hope it's never again needed. |
Read more:
|
|
| From: Paul Mickle |
| Staff Writer, The Trentonian |
Historians still unborn are going to thank Hamilton's Damon DiMarco for his book telling the story of Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center in the
words of cops and firemen and volunteers and many more survivors of the infamous day.
From the pregnant credit analyst who counts her daughter as the "littlest escapee" to the window washer with the life-saving squeegee,
"Tower Stories: The Autobiography of September 11, 2001," lets the witnesses write the story.
An actor and Drew University professor who graduated from Steinert High School in 1989, DiMarco kept his words out of the text and called
himself the editor of the book.
He started the work that very fateful day when a friend walked into his home at 82nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan "and he's covered
in this unbelievable coat of dust.
"I knew right away he had been part of something of some moment, and I turned on my recorder. And this guy proceeded to tell me this incredible
story about how he got caught in a cloud of ash."
Before he was finished his tale, DiMarco was saying, "I've got to get this typed up right away."
Between college classes and auditions for acting roles, DiMarco conducted dozens of recorded interviews knowing the personal accounts of
the chaotic day were the makings of a book.
How did he pick whom to interview?
"Believe it or not, it was good old word of mouth," said DiMarco. "I'd talked to one fireman who would tell me this story of digging himself
out of the rubble and he'd tell me, 'If you think that's incredible, you should talk to Sal because he had it worse.
"And I'd talk to Sal and his story would be more incredible," said DiMarco, who tells his acting students at Drew that "stories are the
lifeblood of any culture."
Like the story told by Florence Engoran, 36, the pregnant credit analyst who was on the 55th floor of Tower 2 when the chunks of concrete falling
away from Tower 1 convinced her to ignore the talk about a small plane hitting and get out.
She and two helpful co-workers had made it down the stairwell to the 20th floor when their building was hit.
"I held on to the handrail -- the impact knocked people over if you didn't hold on. The building moved six to 10 feet. Everyone stopped
dead, the building was swaying so badly.
"'What's happening?' different people were saying, 'They're setting off bombs!' People were using their cell phones to call their families, but
other people were starting to panic, saying 'Stop using the cell phones, maybe it's detonating bombs as we go down.' Crazy things."
Jan Demczur, 48, who emigrated from Poland in 1980, was the veteran Trade Center window washer with the important "skveegee," as he
pronounced it.
When the first jetliner hit the north tower, Demczur and five other men were in an elevator going up. The car slowed as it approached the 68th
floor, then began to fall, until it stopped mid-floor.
With smoke coming into the elevator and the intercom conked out, the men started devising an escaped plan. They would pry open the elevator door
and try to cut through the sheet-rock into the building.
Once they got it open, Demczur used the squeegee's long handle to keep the door propped open. Seeing simple wallboard before them, someone
asked, "Does anybody have a knife?"
"Everybody looked at me," Demczur said. "No. No."
But he "looked in my pocket. I said, 'Maybe we can work with the squeegee.' I grabbed it and started chopping a hole in the drywall."
The wall ended up being three inches thick, but Demczur pressed away and eventually the men were able to kick open a hole big enough to crawl
through.
They emerged over a sink in a men's room and, as Demczur said, didn't think about the elevator coming back and chopping them in half while
they were crawling out into the lavatory.
Published by Revolution Publishing, "Tower Stories" has been on the market about three months and is beginning to catch on with readers.
It's listed on Amazon.com, which has helped the sale, DiMarco said. |
Read more:
|
|
|
|
|
|
