As the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks approaches, we’ve made ten articles from the Prospect archive free to read online. On top of an exclusive extract from a new chapter to the 9/11 Commission report, the responses here range over politics, television, architecture and literature:
Terror and television by Murray Sayle (October 2001)
War by television was already struggling to be born in Vietnam, but 9/11 was the world’s first made-for-television news story. Television, the least self-critical of media, still hasn’t grasped how easily it can be hijacked by terrorists
Minoru Yamasaki by Rowan Moore (November 2001)
Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Centre, was condemned in the 1970s for ruining Manhattan's skyline. The destruction of his towers by ex-architectural student Mohammed Atta prompted a re-assessment of his work
The end of the west? by Anatol Lieven (September 2002)
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Anatol Lieven wrote of the need for “ferocious retaliation” from the US and its allies in response. One year later, he found the US inflamed by nationalism and blind to the strategic disaster of a split with Europe
Atta in Hamburg by Elena Lappin (September 2002)
Mohammed Atta cultivated an academic life, German friends and a terrorist network. How did this sterile city become the launch pad for 9/11?
Two years of gibberish by Geoffrey Wheatcroft (September 2003)
The garbled utterances of the left after 9/11 merely flattered the arguments of warmongers
What were the causes of 9/11? by Peter Bergen (September 2006)
Everyone has a theory about the real causes of 9/11. They range from the nutty (it was the US government) to the plausible but flawed (a response to foreign occupation) to the credible (collateral damage from a clash within Islam)
A desperate fascination by Tom Chatfield (February 2008)
Martin Amis’s has 9/11 essay collection shows us a writer whose prose remains a delicious challenge, but whose political imagination looks increasingly barren
In the shadow of the twin towers by Adam Kirsch (June 2011)
Ten years on, American fiction writers from Don DeLillo to Teju Cole are still struggling to put the horror of September 11th into words. Only a few have succeeded
Decade of disorder by David Miliband (August 2011)
The decade since 9/11 has been the most traumatic for the west since the 1930s. David Miliband looks back at the stunning asymmetries of the last ten years
The twilight war by Philip Zelikow (September 2011)
The 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, which was widely praised for its literary quality, was a landmark in government analysis of catastrophe. Commission director Philip Zelikow explains their unusual approach in a new afterword
Terror and television by Murray Sayle (October 2001)
War by television was already struggling to be born in Vietnam, but 9/11 was the world’s first made-for-television news story. Television, the least self-critical of media, still hasn’t grasped how easily it can be hijacked by terrorists
Minoru Yamasaki by Rowan Moore (November 2001)
Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Centre, was condemned in the 1970s for ruining Manhattan's skyline. The destruction of his towers by ex-architectural student Mohammed Atta prompted a re-assessment of his work
The end of the west? by Anatol Lieven (September 2002)
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Anatol Lieven wrote of the need for “ferocious retaliation” from the US and its allies in response. One year later, he found the US inflamed by nationalism and blind to the strategic disaster of a split with Europe
Atta in Hamburg by Elena Lappin (September 2002)
Mohammed Atta cultivated an academic life, German friends and a terrorist network. How did this sterile city become the launch pad for 9/11?
Two years of gibberish by Geoffrey Wheatcroft (September 2003)
The garbled utterances of the left after 9/11 merely flattered the arguments of warmongers
What were the causes of 9/11? by Peter Bergen (September 2006)
Everyone has a theory about the real causes of 9/11. They range from the nutty (it was the US government) to the plausible but flawed (a response to foreign occupation) to the credible (collateral damage from a clash within Islam)
A desperate fascination by Tom Chatfield (February 2008)
Martin Amis’s has 9/11 essay collection shows us a writer whose prose remains a delicious challenge, but whose political imagination looks increasingly barren
In the shadow of the twin towers by Adam Kirsch (June 2011)
Ten years on, American fiction writers from Don DeLillo to Teju Cole are still struggling to put the horror of September 11th into words. Only a few have succeeded
Decade of disorder by David Miliband (August 2011)
The decade since 9/11 has been the most traumatic for the west since the 1930s. David Miliband looks back at the stunning asymmetries of the last ten years
The twilight war by Philip Zelikow (September 2011)
The 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, which was widely praised for its literary quality, was a landmark in government analysis of catastrophe. Commission director Philip Zelikow explains their unusual approach in a new afterword
