The untold 9/11 stories of ordinary Americans
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
When columnist Mike Kelly of the record of Northern New Jersey jumped into a tugboat headed for lower Manhattan that cloudless, bright Tuesday morning, he couldn't have imagined what awaited him on the other end of that journey. Thus began a decades-long journey through the painful scars left in terrorism's wake. Stories that are now memorialized in his book, After Ground Zero, Everyday Americans, and the Unhealed Scars.
Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. Mike, it's so good to have you here.
Dana, thanks for inviting me. It's a real privilege.
Why did Mike Kelly decide to write a book about ordinary Americans 25 years after 9/11?
It's now been twenty-five years since the horrific events of nine eleven that resulted in the deaths of two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven people. What compelled you to write this book and why now?
Well, as as we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary, I wanted these people to be remembered. Uh I think it's only natural when we write histories, particularly on anniversaries, that we think in terms of numbers. So, yes, there were two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people who died that day. But these were all ordinary people with names, and I wanted to I wanted them to be remembered. And secondly, I wanted to really bear witness to what not only they experienced on 9-11, but also what happened afterwards, because what happened afterwards in the in the 25 years has been consequential for many of these folks.
Your book follows the stories of a broad spectrum of Americans from that September day in New York, Pennsylvania, and DC to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. How did you decide on whose stories to focus in on?
Well, I had been writing a lot about the events, not only of nine eleven, but also in the in the days thereafter. As you correctly point out. I covered the nine eleven commission. I then went down to Guantanamo Bay to see the detention center there. I followed a unit to Iraq as part of the extended war on terror that we had. I came back and I spent a lot of time with families and that sort of thing. So I had the material, but what I wanted to do was pull together a narrative that reflected really the ordinary voices of people. You know, most histories of these large events are written top down, and that's completely understandable. We want to hear what the president was thinking, the military leaders were thinking, and that sort of thing.
I wanted to write this history from the bottom up. I wanted the voices of ordinary people to be here. So I spent a lot of time looking at how I could do this in terms of reflecting the diversity and the cross-section of stories.
How did the author choose which 9/11 stories to feature in *After Ground Zero*?
And so I pulled together some material that I had and characters that I had worked with early in the in the time frame, but I also developed some new characters. as well that I wanted to help kind of pull the narrative together from beginning to end.
The first few chapters of your book captured the urgency and immediacy of the attack in New York based on your first hand reporting on nine eleven and also in the months and years that followed, what was your experience of writing about nine eleven like twenty-five years later?
It was very emotional, Dana. Uh I was I guess I I guess I could say I was surprised at how emotional I got sometimes. As I was writing this, I had to stop sometimes, not just at chapter endings, but also as I was finishing a scene, because I was brought back to that moment. I experienced a lot of what happened that day, but I also, in my subsequent reporting, I wanted to take the reader inside the towers, for example. Inside the firehouses, inside the the hearts and minds of the firefighters and the police officers who responded, but also the people who survived and and and escaped the the burning towers. And the same thing with the Pentagon. I wanted to really get inside what was going on there as as people were trying to respond to this sudden attack on the headquarters of the U.S.
military. And then finally we had This plane that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a very different piece of the narrative.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–0:49
2
Why did Mike Kelly decide to write a book about ordinary Americans 25 years after 9/11?
0:49–2:57
3
How did the author choose which 9/11 stories to feature in *After Ground Zero*?
2:57–10:02
4
What happened to Derek Lovell, the security guard who helped strangers escape the South Tower?
10:02–17:07