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Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
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Booklists and Suggested Reading
9/11 Stars
Page Modified: August 19, 2008
Fiction and Nonfiction related to 9/11
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
Fiction
- Dear Zoe
Author: Beard, Philiip
Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670034010 Date: 2005
Booklist
Beard's stunning debut is an epistolary novel written from 15-year-old Tess DeNunzio to her little sister Zoe. After Zoe's accidental death on September 11, 2001--a day so many others died--Tess's family is numbed by their personal tragedy. Not sinceThe Lovely Bones has there been a study of grief, adolescence, and healing that rings as true asDear Zoe.
Updated 2.15.05 - Windows on the World
Author: Beigbeder, Frederic
Publisher: Miramax $ 24.95 ISBN: 1401352235 Date: 2005
PW
Weaving together philosophy, myth, world politics, and humor, this stunning work of literary daring is a fearless, moving, and unsettling novel set against the events of September 11.
Updated 1.29.05 - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Author: Foer, Jonathan Safran
Publisher: Houghton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0618329706 Date: 2005
Kirkus PW LJ
Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.10.05 - The Whole World Over
Author: Glass, Julia
Publisher: Pantheon $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375422749 Date: 2006
PW
LJ Kirkus
In this new work by the bestselling author of Three Junes, Greenie Duquette, the fiery proprietor of her own Greenwich Village pastry business, becomes the personal chef for the governor of New Mexico, setting in motion a period of adventure and upheaval that culminates in the tragedy of 9/11.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.20.06 - The Good Life
Author: McInerney, Jay
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375411402 Date: 2006
Booklist
Rich with characters and events both comic and harrowing, this novel reveals a time and place, and the lives impacted by the events that occurred on 9/11 in New York--people battered by memory, regret, and unimaginable shock and yet determined to discover what the good life truly is.
Updated 12.5.05 - L'America
Author: McPhee, Martha
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151011710 Date: 2006
LJ Booklist
The events of September 11th serve as a catalyst for the unfolding story of Beth, an American, and Cesare, an Italian, who meet on a small Aegean island and begin a transformative love affair that spans two continents, two decades, and two lifetimes.
Updated 3.6.06 - Absent Friends
Author: Rozan, S.J.
Publisher: Delacorte $ 24 ISBN: 0385338031 Date: 2004
PW Booklist LJ
The secrets of a group of childhood friends unravel in this haunting thriller by Edgar Award winner S.J. Rozan. Set in New York in the unforgettable aftermath of September 11, Absent Friends brilliantly captures a time and place unlike any other.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 9.22.04 - The Writing on the Wall
Author: Schwartz, Lynne Sharon
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582432996 Date: 2005
LJ
Thirty-four and decidedly independent, Renata has been known to keep her involvement with people--men in particular--to a minimum. Then Jack, patient, solid, and sexy, enters her life. One bright September morning, as Renata walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to work, the sky bursts open and change comes without warning. The Writing on the Wall is a profoundly engaging novel about how one woman saw--and we all continue to ponder--the defining event of our times. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.7.05
Nonfiction
- Wake-Up Call
Author: Breitweiser, Kristen
Publisher: Warner $ 24.99 ISBN: 0446579327 Date: 2006
Kirkus
This is the eye-opening, moving, and politically explosive story of a woman who was catapulted from a quiet suburban family life into a courageous battle for justice after her husband was killed in the Trade Center attacks.
Updated 7.11.06 - 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight To Survive Inside the Twin Towers
Author: Dwyer, Jim & Kevin Flynn
Publisher: Times $ 26 ISBN: 0805076824 Date: 2005
Kirkus Booklist
Of the millions of words written about September 11, 2001, most were told from the outside looking in. "New York Times" reporters Dwyer and Flynn have taken the opposite and far more revealing-approach, capturing the little-known stories of the nearly 12,000 ordinary people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others.
Updated 11.29.04 - A Widow's Walk
Author: Fontana, Marian
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743246241 Date: 2005
Kirkus
Fontana, president of the 9/11 Widows and Victim's Family Association, pens a moving, lyrical, and profoundly funny memoir of a year in the life of a firefighter wife widowed in the 9/11 attacks.
Updated 6.29.05 - Watching the World Change
Author: Friend, David
Publisher: FSG $ 30 ISBN: 0374299331 Date: 2006
Kirkus PW
In this collection, Friend tells the unforgettable stories behind the haunting yet defining images of the September 11th terrorist attacks and shows how advances in television, digital photography, and the Internet produced an effect whereby more than two billion people saw that day's terrible events as they happened.
Updated 7.11.06 - Firehouse
Author: Halberstam, David
Publisher: Hyperion $ 22.95 ISBN: 1401300057 Date: 2006
Kirkus LJ
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist offers an intimate portrait of Engine 40, Ladder 35 on the Upper West Side of New York City, which lost 12 men in the World Trade Center attack. Halberstam tells a story that is about the individuals themselves, as well as the effect this cataclysmic event has had on the victims' families, their surviving colleagues, and their community.
Updated 8.16.06 - The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Author: Jacobson, Sid/Ernie Colon
Publisher: Hill & Wang $ 30/16.95 ISBN: 0809057387/0809057395 Date: 2006
Kirkus
This accessible version of the 9/11 Commission's official report on the terrorist attacks, released in 2005, puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century. Jacobson's text faithfully captures the report's investigative thoroughness, while Colon's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original.
Updated 7.11.06 - American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center
Author: Langewiesche, William
Publisher: North Point $ 22 ISBN: 0865475822 Date: 2002
PW
With the "knowledge and passion as well as . . . careful eloquence for which his reportage is known" ("The New York Times Book Review"), Langewiesche anatomizes the physical details of the collapse and deconstruction, capturing in the process the contests of politics and personality that were its aftershock.
Updated 8.16.06 - The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot and Why the FBI and CIA
Failed to Stop It
Author: Miller, John, Michael Stone and Chris Mitchell
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786869003 Date: 2003
Kirkus
Written by ABC News journalist John Miller and co-writer Michael Stone, a blow by blow investigation into the terrorist cells involved in the September 11 attacks, using information gleaned from sources within the FBI and CIA, and from reporting Miller has gathered during his many years as a reporter covering the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, through the present.
Updated 7.3.02 - Manhattan to Baghdad: Dispatches from the Frontline of the War on Terrorism
Author: McGeough, Paul
Publisher: Allen & Unwin $ 17.95 (paper) ISBN: 1741140994 Date: 2003
Kirkus
A foreign correspondent's analysis of the international repercussions from the events of September 11.
Updated 5.9.03 - 11-Sept: An Oral History
Author: Murphy, Dean
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385507682 Date: 2003
Kirkus
Published in commemoration of the tragic events on September 11, 2001, this moving collection of 40 first-person accounts captures the courage and compassion exhibited at that time by people of all walks of life.
Updated 7.3.02 - Sixteen Acres: Conflict, Vanity, and the Future of Ground Zero
Author: Nobel, Philiip
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 0805074945 Date: 2005
Kirkus
Tracing the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site from graveyard to playground for high design, insurgent critic Nobel strips away the hyperbole to reveal the secret life--including a tally of deceptions and betrayals--of the century's most charged building project.
Updated 11.9.04 - In The Shadow of No Towers
Author: Spiegelman, Art
Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375423079 Date: 2004
PW Booklist
In his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, Art Spiegelman offers a deeply personal, politically charged, graphically and emotionally stunning account of the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001--a no-holds-barred political statement and a revelation of the cultural reach of cartooning.
Updated 10.4.04 - The Looming Tower: Al Queda and the Road to 9/11
Author: Wright, Lawrence
Publisher: Knopf $ 27.95 ISBN: 037541486x Date: 2006
Kirkus PW Booklist
This sweeping narrative history of 9/11 includes important new information about the people, ideas, events, and intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks, told for the first time from both the American and Arab sides of the story.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8.16.06
Hotlists
African American Fiction | Christian Fiction
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Crime Fiction | Fiction | African American Fiction | Christian Fiction | Nonfiction Notables
Stars
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