What followed, as Battle for Ground Zero details, was a sorry tale of greed. The profligate symbol of that greed, the former Twin Towers, was the terrorists' main target.
Of the nearly 3000 dead, roughly 1100 were never found. Not even a fragment of bone remained. People disintegrated into the dirt, the book says. Ground Zero became a place where people were physically, not just symbolically, located.
The timing of the attack on the WTC, just before dawn Eastern Standard Time, was precisely when the largest percentage of Earth's people are awake. It could be seen at once, anywhere, in both hemispheres, any latitude, live.
Battle for Ground Zero is a story about a string of battles and of the people who believed they owned a piece of Ground Zero. It is a story of owners and politicians, of the people in the streets, public meetings and living rooms.
It's also a story of dysfunction, messiness, persistence, compromise and heated politics, says the book, commenting rather cynically ''That's America the Re-build-iful''.
The book quotes the architectural critic of the Wall Street Journal, A.L. Huxtable, as saying of the masterplan competition for a new building: ''The objective is still the reinstatement of real estate not the revitalisation of Lower Manhattan with the memorial an afterthought to be plugged in later.''
This is a sentiment agreed to by many victims' families. The building will not be complete until 2017, some 16 years after 9/11. Because of ongoing construction, the monitored memorial has only one entrance, entry is by free ticket only, reserved in advance online.
While not wanting to lessen the tragedy of 9/11, I couldn't help but reflect while reading the book that some 9000 Londoners lost their lives to the V-2 rockets alone. The V-2s were the first ''terror'' weapons and came down at faster than the speed of sound, the explosion happening before the sound of their approach could be heard.
Roughly 43,000 people were killed overall and two million made homeless by the bombing. But Blitz or 9/11, it's a sobering thought that today's target is no longer military but the morale of civilians, the ''soft targets'' and the symbols of money.
And, as readers of Battle for Ground Zero will find, the aftermath of 9/11 was all about money, hand in glove with politics.
- Ted Fox is a Dunedin online marketing consultant.
