Stephen Evans at Literary Review:
The great service done by Mitchell Zuckoff in Fall and Rise is to document in minute but telling detail the innumerable human tragedies that unfolded in the space of a few hours on the morning of 11 September 2001.
The day produced countless stories of chance, of people taking one route or another without realising that the decision they had made would save or kill them. I was in New York at the time, working for the BBC, and was on my way to Windows on the World, the complex at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, on the morning of the attacks. My own lucky break came at the corner of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue, where I got off the bus and immediately spotted a Cuban coffee shop called Sucelt. The prospect of empanadas and Hispanic coffee instead of the usual New York dishwater drew me off course. It delayed me long enough to ensure that I had only reached the bottom of the South Tower when the first plane struck the North Tower.
more here.