The Eleventh Day

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE For most living Americans, September 11, 2001, is the darkest date in the nation’s history. But what exactly happened on 9/11? Could it have been prevented? And what remains unresolved? Here is the first panoramic, authoritative account of that tragic day—from the first brutal actions of the hijackers to our government’s flawed response; from the untruths told afterward by U.S. officials to the “elephant in the room” of the 9/11 Commission’s report—the clues that point to foreign involvement. New York Times bestselling authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan write with access to thousands of recently released official documents, raw transcripts, fresh interviews, and the perspective that can come only from a decade of research and evaluation. Riveting, revelatory, and thoroughly sourced, The Eleventh Day is updated for this edition—with new reporting on a development that the former cochairman of Congress’s 9/11 probe calls the most important in years. This is the essential one-volume work, required reading for us all. “Essential.”—The Wall Street Journal “Meticulous, comprehensive . . . an extraordinary synthesis.”—John Farmer, 9/11 Commission senior counsel “This wide-angle look . . . examines the personalities behind the terror plot, U.S. intelligence blunders, the toxic environmental impact on first responders, the march to war, [and] gray areas in the 9/11 Commission Report.”—The Washington Post “The best available general account of 9/11—soberly written, judiciously weighed, meticulously sourced.”—The Sunday Times

"Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan have written the definitive account of 9/11. The shockwaves of the September 11, 2001 attacks in America reverberate to this day. Though Osama Bin Laden has been killed, questions remain. What exactly happened? Could 9/11 have been prevented? How and why did so much acrimony and misinformation arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a quiet field in Pennsylvania? And what has yet to be revealed? The Eleventh Day, written with access to thousands of recently released official documents, is updated for this edition and reports on a development which the former chairman of Congress' 9/11 probe describes as the most important in years ."

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war’s last hour. Persico recounts the war’s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called “the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.”

Sample Text

A poignant First World War story of friendship Jim and Jules are childhood friends, born on the same day in the same village. All their lives, Jim has been first--born two minutes before Jules, always faster, always stronger. When the First World War breaks out in Europe, the two young men enlist in the fight with 30,000 other Canadians. On the Front, conditions aren't epic and glorious but muddy and barbaric. Here, too, Jim is the first to attack. Jules is always two minutes behind: lagging in drills, missing the boat, handed chores instead of honors. On November 11, 1918, Jim and Jules are sent out to fight one last time. Jim, always first over the top of the trench, is shot and dies at 10:58 am, two minutes before the Armistice takes effect at 11:00 am. New in paperback and illustrated by political cartoonist Jacques Goldstyn, this picture book, inspired by true events, is a simple, poignant, and thought-provoking story.

From debut author Alyssa Hollingsworth comes a story about living with fear, being a friend, and finding a new place to call home. They say you can't get something for nothing, but nothing is all Sami has. When his grandfather’s most-prized possession—a traditional Afghan instrument called a rebab—is stolen, Sami resolves to get it back. He finds it at a music store, but it costs $700, and Sami doesn’t have even one penny. What he does have is a keychain that has caught the eye of his classmate. If he trades the keychain for something more valuable, could he keep trading until he has $700? Sami is about to find out. The Eleventh Trade is both a classic middle school story and a story about being a refugee. Alyssa Hollingsworth tackles a big issue with a light touch. 2020 UKLA Award Winner

Though Dorothy Day may be best known today for her religious peace activism and her role in founding the Catholic Worker movement, she lived a bohemian youth in the Lower West Side of New York City during the late 1910s and early 1920s. As an editor for radical socialist publications like The Liberator and The Masses, Day was involved in several left-wing causes as well as the Silent Sentinels’ 1917 protest for women’s suffrage in front of the White House. The Eleventh Virgin is a semi-autobiographical novel told through the eyes of June Henreddy, a young radical journalist whose fictional life closely parallels Day’s own life experiences, including her eventual disillusionment with her bohemian lifestyle. Though later derided by Day as “a very bad book,” The Eleventh Virgin captures a vibrant image of New York’s radical counterculture in the early 20th century and sheds a light on the youthful misadventures of a woman who would eventually be praised by Pope Francis for her dream of “social justice and the rights of persons” during his historic address to a joint session of Congress in 2015. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

An elephant's eleventh birthday party is marked by eleven games preceding the banquet to be eaten at the eleventh hour; but when the time to eat arrives, the birthday feast has disappeared. The reader is invited to guess the thief.