Photograph by Gilles Peress
Every September 11th for the past twenty-five years, people have gathered at Ground Zero to hear the tolling of bells, which mark a grim set of milestones, beginning at 8:46 A.M. when a plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Today, as Jill Lepore notes in this week’s issue, there was a new bell added to the series, to memorialize “the thousands who have since died by suicide, or from cancer and other illnesses caused by the ravages of terrorism.” The final bell is a reminder that the horrors of the attacks would take place, for different people, across different time frames. “The day’s events are measured in minutes, a ticking clock,” Lepore writes, “the grief in years, a beating heart.”Today, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks, we look back on those first shocking moments, and consider how they shaped so much of the history that followed.On the morning the planes hit the Twin Towers, New Yorker correspondents reported from New York, Washington, and beyond, leaving an enduring record of the catastrophic attack and the first inklings of the ways it would change the world. Read the dispatches »The photographer Gilles Peress went to the scene immediately. The images he took on the ground are stunning depictions of chaos, terror, and moments of human grace. Two decades later, he shared his memories of what he called “an inconceivable event . . . that we have a problem placing in a continuum of our experience of history so far.” See the photographs »The first issue of The New Yorker to publish after 9/11 featured Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman’s mournful black-on-black cover. In a new video, Mouly describes how she went about drawing the image to convey what felt like “the complete collapse of the world.” Watch the video »Five months later, the magazine published James B. Stewart’s “The Real Heroes Are Dead,” which remains one of our most widely read pieces about the attacks. It chronicles the life and death of Rick Rescorla, a Wall Street security chief who saved thousands of lives that day. It’s a story of sacrifice and grief. But it’s also a love story. Read it here »Millions of people have been killed or injured as a result of the U.S. military campaigns that followed 9/11. Robin Wright offers a sobering verdict: “The consensus among experts who have spent their professional lives dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 is that the ‘war on terror’ was never winnable.” Read the story »September 11, 2001, marked the true end of the twentieth century, and the beginning of the calamities of the twenty-first, Adam Gopnik writes this week. He points out that “a desperate need for reassurance through revenge governed too many minds.” But he also identifies a hopeful lesson: “What we really learned is that liberal societies and cities—this city, their greatest accomplishment—can be stronger than they know, if only they choose to know it.” Read the essay »More Top StoriesRecent turmoil at OpenAI and Anthropic has centered on A.I. models going “rogue.” Joshua Rothman asks: Is A.I. really capable of hatching plans? “The Uprising,” starring Andrew Garfield, dramatizes the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381—and attempts to blend historical re-creation and hyperkinetic action filmmaking, our critic writes. The most-clicked item in yesterday’s newsletter was about a political operative trying to wrest the Democratic Party away from its far-left flank.An art show: “Willem de Kooning Drawing” (at the Art Institute of Chicago through September 20th) articulates the artist’s pain and anger, and the frightful era he lived in. A TV show: “My Brilliant Career,” a pop-feminist interpretation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 Australian novel, is “the sort of show that you need to remind yourself to slow down and savor.” A musical: “Music City” (at St. Luke’s Theatre, in Manhattan, through September 19th) is “a toe-tappin’, hand-clappin’, tissue-dabbin’ humdinger of a show.”Today’s Crossword Puzzle: Word before Altos and Angeles, on a map of California—three letters. Catalogues: Can you sort the items into the correct order? Shuffalo: Can you make a longer word with each new letter? Laugh Lines: Test your knowledge of classic New Yorker cartoons.“I haven’t finished my summer reading.”Cartoon by Ellis RosenP.S. “Try to praise the mutilated world. / Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.” Revisit Adam Zagajewski’s poem, published in our first issue after the attacks. 🗽
