Grand Illusion The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11

9780060536619

0060536616

"Grand Illusion" is the definitive report on 9/11 in New York -- the true story of what happened that day and how the city fought to recover afterwards. It also traces the comeback trail of a city that has never faced a fiercer fire or stiffer wind, discovering survivors who rebuild neighborhoods, heroes who rescue economies. Beyond the historical account, the book centers on the first clear-eyed evaluation of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's role before, during, and after the disaster. While the pictures of a soot-covered Giuliani making his way through the streets became very much a part of his personal mythology, they were also a symbol of one of his greatest failures. A more sensibly located emergency command post would have kept him behind the scenes, but it would have given the city a functioning, state-of-the-art operations center that might have averted some of the calamitous decisions made that day. And the failures weren't limited to iconography. The mayor's performance, though marked by personal courage and grace under fire, followed two terms in office pursuing an utterly wrongheaded approach to the city's security against terrorism. Grand Illusion will serve as an indispensible corrective to the rough draft of history rushed out in the wake of 9/11. Turning the mythology on its head, it reveals how Giuliani, far from being the savior of the day, was directly responsible for many of the city's inabilities to cope with the crisis. It also demonstrates how Giuliani has himself revised history, inaccurately casting himself as prescient terror hawk when in fact he ignored repeated warnings, too distracted by pet projects and turf wars to attend to vital precautions. Whilethis book provides an unflinching portrayal of what happened on and after September 11, it will not leave readers hopeless. Instead, it will serve as the first authoritive history - reassessing and recounting the victims, the villains, and the heroes - of the pivotal day in our recent history.