After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember September 2001 and the Years that Followed

UPCOMING EVENT: On October 14th After the Fall Co-Editor Mary Marshall Clark will moderate a panel at the "Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives Conference." The panel is entitled: "September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: Life in the Political Aftermath." Click here to learn more.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Published to mark the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, After the Fall is a landmark oral history drawn from the celebrated collection of 9/11 interviews at Columbia University (Publication Date: September 11, 2011).

Within days of 9/11, Columbia’s Oral History Research Office (now the Columbia Center for Oral History) and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy deployed interviewers across the city to begin collecting the accounts and observations of hundreds of people from a diverse mix of New York neighborhoods and backgrounds. Over subsequent months and years, follow-up interviews produced a deep and revealing look at how 9/11 changed individual lives and communities in New York City.

After the Fall presents a selection of these fascinating testimonies, with heartbreaking and enlightening stories from a broad range of New Yorkers. The interviews include first-responders, taxi drivers, school teachers, artists, religious leaders, immigrants, and others who were interviewed at intervals since 2001. The result is a remarkable time-lapse account of the city as it changed in the wake of 9/11, one that will resonate powerfully with New Yorkers and millions of others who continue to feel the impact of that day.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mary Marshall Clark, Peter Bearman, Catherine Ellis, and Stephen Drury Smith

USEFUL LINKS

MEDIA COVERAGE

Aug. 7 | Chronicle of Higher Education | New York's 9/11: An Oral Archive Takes Shape

Aug. 8 | Publishers Weekly | Nonfiction Review: After the Fall

Aug.11 | Salon | Books to enlighten, and help us remember

Sept. 1 | The Columbia Record | When the Towers Fell: An Oral History of 9/11 and its Aftermath

Sept. 5 | AFP | Anniversary brings avalanche of 9/11 books

Sept. 6 | Reuters: The Great Debate | Jupiter and Joseph

Sept. 9 | The New Yorker | Audio: New Yorkers Remember 9/11

Sept. 11 | The New York Times | Witness to Apocalypse

Sept. 11 | San Diego Tribune | Book Examines What We Take from 9/11

Sept. 12 | The New Yorker | Oral History

Sept. 12 | WNYC | A City Reimagined Performance

CONTENTS

vii — About the Transcripts
ix — Brief Timeline—September 11, 2001
xi — Acknowledgments
xv — Introduction by Peter Bearman and Mary Marshall Clark

1. James E. Dobson, Paramedic
2. Mary Lee Hannell, Director, Human Resources, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
3. Somi Roy, Film and Media Curator
4. Donna Jensen, Computer Programmer, Manager
5. Maria Georgina Lopez Zombrano, Street Vendor
6. James P. Hayes, Priest
7. Roberta Galler, Psychotherapist
8. Brian Conley, Artist
9. Mohammed Bilal-Mirza, Taxi Driver
10. Yamir A. Munar, Office Assistant
11. Debbia [Dhaba] Almontaser, Conflict Mediator, Educator
12. Jaron Lanier, Author, Computer Scientist, Composer, Visual Artist
13. Jay Swithers, Captain, Emergency Medical Service
14. Inder Jit Singh, Dentist, Anatomy Professor, Author
15. Talat Hamdani, Public School Teacher
16. Salmaan Jaffery, Banker
17. Sandra Hernandez, Community Organizer/Activist
18. Robert W. Snyder, Historian and Journalist
19. Ghislaine Boulanger, Psychologist