"At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers - reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it - until now." "Of the millions of words written about this wrenching day, most have been from the outside looking in. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn have taken the opposite - and far more revealing - approach. Reported solely from the perspective of the people inside the towers, 102 Minutes is the epic account of ordinary men and women who saved themselves and others." "Chance encounters, moments of grace, a shout across an office shaped these minutes, marking the border between fear and solace, staking the boundary between life and death."

"From hundreds of interviews with rescuers and survivors, thousands of pages of oral histories, and countless phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts, Dwyer and Flynn have assembled a gripping narrative that is also investigative reporting of the first rank. They show that even as so many people - uniformed officers and civilians alike - responded with great valor, they did so in a context of inadequate building safety and tragic flaws in New York's emergency preparedness."--BOOK JACKET.