\American Ground"" may seem irreverent because it appears in a little more than a year after its events. But it maintains a confident sort of reverence for every person involved in the deconstruction of the disaster. The author, William Langewiesche, turns hallowed ground into a demolition site and portrays the search for the bodies of firemen as sifting through steel. Though the impersonalization of the World Trade Center's unbuilding may seem to be heartless and brutally unsentimental, the narrative is not.
The book begins with the collapse of The Towers pared down to a 10-second replay of the immortal event at 9:59 a.m. The South Tower takes on a gargantuan presence that bows to the forces of gravity after its wounds have weakened it to an incomprehensible degree. The building gains an eerie personality because the victims within perish without moments to separate them.
The problem of reading ""American Ground"" is that every image comes hurtling back from a little more than a year ago. The event itself barrels into the memory with the slightest reference. Because Sept. 11 tore furrows into American flesh, a little bit of blood and a few tears still run to the surface when anybody mentions it in any length. The book must be taken a dozen or so pages at a time so that the catastrophe's weight does not become a numbing sensation that steadily cuts off the circulation of the event's very blood.
A professional discourse is established between the book and any scrap of patriotism. Injecting pride into the cleanup of the site would be a grisly offense where the mood still hangs with a heavy sense of mourning. Void of any examination of American nationalism at work, instead there is an appreciative and honest portrayal of the quality of work that went into the site. Langeweische realizes that the unshakable tenet of hard work done well guides the project.
This hard work wound up in the hands of rough-necked construction workers and proletarian diehards. A small army of callused handed people with expertise on jackhammers and blowtorches brought the project to completion. In stark contrast to the surrounding business and professional buildings, the remains of the World Trade Center became the domain of working class people doing their jobs and doing them efficiently. Wielding muscle instead of paperwork, the job whittled itself down to the foundations, carried by the biceps of blue-collar people.
