The first book on the terrorist attacks of September 11 is out. And far from being a breathless, exploitative quick hit, 09/11 8:48 AM: Documenting America’s Greatest Tragedy (Booksurge.com, 319 pages) is thoughtful, reflective, and even moving at times.

A joint project of the journalism department at New York University, parts of which are barely a mile from Ground Zero, and the literary and political Web site BlueEar.com, 09/11 8:48 AM comprises impressions and eyewitness accounts. The 75 contributors are mainly from New York, many of them NYU students and faculty members. But the writers also include journalists, a flight attendant, a priest, a 15-year-old Ugandan girl, and other ordinary people who were caught up in an extraordinary and terrible event.

" If there’s lasting value in the book, it’s as a document of that moment — the minds and souls and emotions, and the attempt to make sense of them through the smoke, " says Jay Rosen, chairman of the NYU journalism department, who helped pull much of the book together. In the Foreword, he writes: " The most basic act of journalism, by no means limited to journalists, is when someone says to us, ‘I was there, you weren’t, let me tell you about it.’ "

A particularly acute observer is Aman Batheja, a journalism student and resident adviser who recalls that she had screwed up at a training drill just days before the attacks, leaving the side of an unconscious student in order to deal with another problem. " Rule #1. Never leave the dead girl, " the " student " instructed her at the conclusion of the drill. Not long after, Batheja and other RAs found themselves risking their lives — and disobeying orders — to roust some 1200 students from their smoke-filled dormitory.

Other contributions range from the quotidian (an account of how a Manhattan sailing school faces financial ruin because the attacks), the earnestly awkward ( " Now we wait in paranoia for The Next Big Thing, our once-meaningful lives suspended indefinitely in a global tangle of bullshit " ), and the accusatory ( " So I’d like to ask: where were you mourners when the people of Kosovo, Chechnya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone were wiped out, killed, tortured, raped? Do you grieve for the Palestinian child killed by the Israeli soldiers this summer? " ).

09/11 8:48 AM is a product of the moment — so ephemeral that parts of it already seem outdated, such as the fears some writers express that President Bush will launch a massive, indiscriminate military response. Yet, oddly enough, the book might best be appreciated by setting it aside and picking it up again at some point in the future. We’re all still numb from the events of September 11 and its aftermath. Right now, the book’s numerous firsthand accounts of what it was like to be in New York seem too much like what we’ve read in the newspapers and seen on television every day. Six months from now, after the news media have moved on to something else, paging through 09/11 8:48 AM is likely to be a very different experience.

Rosen says the book was originally proposed by Ethan Casey, editor-in-chief of BlueEar.com, who also edited the final manuscript. NYU’s participation grew out of a September 17 teach-in and a subsequent call to students and faculty members to submit their writing. " It’s a risky thing to come out with a book this quickly, because you have to avoid its being a stunt. And I didn’t want this to be a stunt, " says Rosen. He needn’t have worried. Far from being a stunt, 09/11 8:48 AM has real power that is likely to hold up over time.

09/11 8:48 AM is available from Booksurge.com at http://www.booksurge.com/author.php3?accountID=BLUE00002. The paperback version costs $14.99, and a downloadable e-version costs $6. All proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross.

Issue Date: October 3, 2001