EBOOK
Battle for Ground Zero
Inside the Political Struggle to Rebuild the World Trade Center
Elizabeth Greenspan(0)
About
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. 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.
Battle for 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.
Battle for Ground Zero is an exhaustively researched reminder of how long it took to put a brave face on the horror of 9/11.
Battle for 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.
Battle for Ground Zero is an exhaustively researched reminder of how long it took to put a brave face on the horror of 9/11.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"A must-read study of the power of democracy and shared memory to shape our public spaces."
Kirkus (Starred Review)
"Riveting... an engrossing and evolving portrait of unrealized expectations and political gamesmanship…Greenspan's exactingly researched and artistically rendered reportage thoughtfully details its twisting journey upward."
Publishers Weekly
"Elizabeth Greenspan, an urban anthropologist, vividly recounts the dysfunctional process and controversies that put her favorite graffiti, "America the Re-build-iful," to a grueling test that is only now about to be graded by the public… a valuable and highly accessible primer for everyone who wants to better understand how government works and why it does not."
The New York Times