The Never Forget series continues with The Towers.
In the seventeen minutes between the first impact and the second, the world still believed it was witnessing an accident. Smoke poured from the North Tower while anchors speculated about a wayward commuter plane, offices kept ringing, and millions of people continued their Tuesday morning as if the sky had not just been violated. Then, at 9:03, the second airliner appeared on live television and drove itself into the South Tower. In that single, unblinking instant the illusion of isolated tragedy collapsed; what had been a shocking event became an act of war. The distance between “how could this happen” and “we are under attack” was measured in heartbeats. Everything that followed—the towers’ fall, the wars, the security state, the long shadow of fear and resolve—was already contained in those few minutes when the second plane proved that the first had not been a mistake. The old world ended not with the collapse of steel, but with the sudden, terrible clarity that arrived before the second tower even began to burn.