The Day That Shook the World: Understanding September 11th by Richard Sambrook
On September 11, 2001, I was at work as normal in my school. Around lunchtime, a teacher told me that there had been a terrible accident. An aeroplane had flown into the World Trade Centre, a massive skyscraper in New York.
As the day went on, we learned the awful truth. Not one, but two, planes had been flown deliberately into the buildings that were made of two tower blocks. Another had crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US military authorities. Another had crash-landed before it hit the White House, home of the American president.
When I arrived home that night, I sat watching the television pictures with my family. We were watching history in the making. These events have dominated world politics ever since, leading directly to the war against Iraq and other terrorist atrocities across the world. So this is an important book to read.
Pick a chapter
This is quite a long book, and the language is challenging. You might find it helpful to remember that it is organised into chapters, and that each chapter is like a separate essay on a different aspect of the event. That means that you can pick and choose which chapters you read: you do not have to plough through the whole book.
