Rising from Ground Zero: 9/11 and the FDNY’s Path through Crisis to Recovery… Publication date 8/31/26

About 9 years ago, I was lunching at Wharton’s Aresty Center (executive education).  I wasn’t teaching so I wasn’t with participants.  In between meetings, I looked to refuel quickly before re-entering the fray. I was, in short, minding my own business during a short hiatus/respite.

Andre Kotze plopped down across from me. I’d known Andre and had worked with him for about a decade at that time.  A quick greeting and this affable, accomplished facilitator of experiential learning and executive coach got to the point as I continued inhaling my lunch.

“How’d you like to do a few interviews with FDNY folk about 9/11?”

“Ok… Why?”

“To help ease Paul {mutual friend, colleague, and retiring Captain in the FDNY} into retirement.”

“Sure.”

From such beginnings…

We did a few interviews.  Then a few more. Decided we had an article (or 6). We approached 40 interviews and over 80 hours of interviewing with responders to the attacks on the WTC towers on 9/11/01…and the events that followed.  The 25th anniversary of those attacks approached.  We decided to write a book, this book:
https://www.risingfromgroundzero.org/ (author page, lots of information about the book).

The book came to rest on over 40 interviews totaling about 90 hours over 9 years.  Interviews with responders on the day and rebuilders of the FDNY.  We set the book up holding to 3 principles: 1) It’s the interviews. It’s the interviews. It’s the interviews. (It’s about them, not us.) 2) No ‘combat porn’.  No descent into the titillating or the sensational. (Correspondingly,  eschew sensational or emotionally attributional writing). 3) No operational dissection or critique (i.e., it’s about the lived and remembered experience of responders).  Also, the 3 of us incorporated to secure control of the interviews and to commit to 51% of net profits going to FDNY related charities.

The book violates lots of literary norms.  To good effect, I believe.

1. We aim for multiple niches: leaders (in every walk of life), first responders, firefighters, military, executives, historians, and management academics

2. We address a range of subjects: leading through crisis, prolonged hard times, healing, and organizational change/transformation

3. To do 1 and 2 we adopt an unusual structure:

   1. The main chapters have 2 parts.

   2. Part A comprises 75-80% of the chapter.

      1. 90%+ are quotes from interviewees grouped by subject

      2. A carefully curated easily accessible timeline provides context

      3. Minimal amounts of writing connects the quotes

      4. Author writing resembles that of war correspondents—concrete, brief, context setting.  Say less. Communicate more.  Get out of the way.

   3. Part B comprises the rest of the main chapters and contains:

      1. A summary of the material in Part A.

      2. Concise lessons for leaders derived from Part A.

      3. Longer explanation of those lessons.

      4. Several pages of commentary about an aspect of Part A based on a piece or two of management writing.

We understand from editors and reviewers that we have successfully threaded the reader niche needle.  Those who only want the oral history, firsthand story need read only Part A. Those who want to read the book as a case study can read only Part B.  Those who want both can read both.   A fairly extensive set of appendices support a reader who wishes to explore topics further. To paraphrase one reviewer, ‘you create a structure that the reader can trust.’

Or, as Annie McKee, best-selling author on leadership and EI, wrote,

“Rising from Ground Zero preserves what must never be lost: the lived truth of those who answered the call on September 11 and in the long decades since then. Some books inform. Rising from Ground Zero transforms. The unvarnished words of the 9/11 FDNY responders show us what leadership looks like when the ground itself gives way. This book is honest, humane, and quietly devastating. Read it slowly. Listen to the people’s voices, their pain, their grief, their strength and their hope. If you lead anyone—a team, a company, a family—open this book…”

I hope that you open it and that it serves you well.