Overview

In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans came together in a way not seen for a generation, pledging unity to rebuild after the horrific loss of the Twin Towers. People were signing up to go to war; rescue workers were laboring to clear rubble. But instead of becoming a rallying symbol in the fight against terrorism, Ground Zero has been plagued by intense conflict and controversy from the very start. Battlefor Ground Zero goes behind the scenes of this fight to rebuild, revealing how grieving families, commercial interests, and politicking bureaucrats clashed at every step of the way, confounding progress and infuriating the public. Since the fall of 2001, author Elizabeth Greenspan has been documenting the drama - conducting interviews with neighborhood residents, architects, officials, rescue workers, and victims' relatives, as well as key New York players like uber-developer Larry Silverstein, and Governor Pataki. Here she provides a warts-and-all look at this pivotal decade - from the bitter feuding between city officials and victims' families, to the endless controversy over the memorial design, to the fraught tenth anniversary, against a still-unfinished building. Publishing just as the memorial is finally completed, Battlefor Ground Zero is an exhaustively researched reminder of how long it took to put a brave face on the horror of 9/11.

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9780230341388

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Reviews

'Battle for Ground Zero's mix of accessible language, exclusive interviews with key actors, and deeply personal tone reads partly like the work of a journalist, a partly like that of a memoirist...the timeliness of Greenspan's book is a testimony to the insights she has gained through years of dedicated research' - LSE Review of Books Absorbing and illuminating about the tortuous process of deciding what should rise from the ashes of the 16-acre Ground Zero site...Elizabeth Greenspan, an urban anthropologist at Harvard, is not a New Yorker...which helps her remain scrupulously fair-minded...the level of detail is impressive but never overwhelming - The Sunday Times

Author Information

Elizabeth Greenspan is a writer and urban anthropologist currently teaching at Harvard University. She writes regularly about Ground Zero forThe Atlanticonline. Her writing has also appeared inThe Washington PostandThe Harvard Review, among other publications, and she has worked for the Associated Press Rome Bureau, and National Journal magazine.She has lectured about Ground Zero and 9/11 at numerous colleges and universities, including Harvard, Brandeis College, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Temple University, and SUNY-Albany. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

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