Journalist Michael Zuckoff Discusses His New Book at the 9/11 Memorial Museum

Last week, Mitchell Zuckoff participated in a public program at the 9/11 Memorial Museum to launch his new book “Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11.”

“Fall and Rise” is a comprehensive work of nonfiction that weaves together many personal stories of the survivors, family members and first military responders on Sept. 11, 2001. Zuckoff spoke to Amy Weinstein, the senior curator of oral history and vice president of collections at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, about his research and reporting of the event.

In the video clip below, Zuckoff describes how he chose to frame the narrative to best highlight the humanistic aspects of 9/11 as well as respect the sensitivities of the event.

“I knew at the outset, that was how I had to do it. The human element, to me, was the way that I could connect readers to this story. That I was not going to contribute something important or, you know, meaningful if I was simply doing the news version at five hundred pages. I knew that the news, the investigative work, the sort of pulling together the strands of the communications failures, of the military issues, the things that I try to highlight, particularly in part one of the book, and then the construction failures within the twin towers, that I highlight in part two, those are investigative techniques but that was always going to be the scaffolding on which I overlay the human stories that I felt people would connect to.”

You can view the full program here. Find out more about the spring 2019 public programming season at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

By 9/11 Memorial Staff