Jim Dwyer, Photo credit: Catherine E. Dwyer

Kevin Flynn, Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted, from the perspective of those who survived.

Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, native New Yorkers, veteran newspaper reporters, and the recipients of many awards together and separately, now work at The New York Times. Dwyer is the coauthor of Two Seconds Under the World, an account of the 1993 effort to destroy the World Trade Center, and of Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted. He is also the author of Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York City Subway. Flynn, a special projects editor at the Times, was the newspaper’s police bureau chief on September 11. He previously worked as a reporter for the New York Daily News, Newsday, and the Stamford Advocate.

Judges' Citation

102 Minutes is a taut blend of narrative and investigative journalism that takes readers inside the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11. Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn’s painstaking reconstruction reveals that poor design and emergency preparedness trapped hundreds of people who might otherwise have survived. The authors also tell vivid and poignant stories about individuals struggling to stay alive, or to say goodbye. A moving, enraging and cautionary book, 102 Minutes reminds us how quickly events—even ones as exhaustively covered as 9/11—become mythologized and misunderstood.