Product Details
Hardcover
160 pages
powerHouse Books
Published 2002
From Library Journal
The world discovered New York's firefighters in the thick of their department's greatest single loss and paradoxically one of its greatest achievements-the evacuation of thousands from the burning Trade Center towers. But the courage and skill displayed last September were, argues Golway, the culmination of three centuries of firefighting culture developed doing hazardous work in an increasingly vertical city. Golway is city editor and columnist for the New York Observer and coauthor of The Irish in America, but more to the point for this moving history, he is the son and grandson of New York City firemen and no stranger to the "culture of firefighting." In So Others Might Live, the first full history of the FDNY in 60 years, Golway shows the department's emergence from amateur bucket brigades into the beginnings of a specialized force and up to the present, never letting a memorable figure or vivid moment escape his narrative. The book is simultaneously a social history of the changing city and a dramatic record of the disasters that have assaulted and periodically reshaped it: Manhattan's great fire of 1776 made thousands homeless and leveled a quarter of the city's structures, for instance, while city firefighters played a crucial role during America's worst riot-the draft riots of 1863-before establishing New York's first professional force two years later. Golway's narrative updates a classic history by Costello, Our Firemen: A History of the New York Fire Departments Volunteer and Paid, originally published in 1887 and now abridged and republished under a new name. Costello delivers all the sooty romantic lore in high style ("Onward, still onward, swept the fiery bosom of destruction") while detailing the evolution of a firefighting force that is the recognizable progenitor of the one that rushed up into the burning towers. Another worthy companion to Golway's book is New York's Bravest: Eight Decades of Photographs from the Daily News, which records 80 years of New York firefighting through 166 pages of dramatic picture stories-children plucked breathlessly from harm, a building transformed by hosing during a winter fire into a glittering ice palace, the seven-alarm blaze caused by a jet collision over Brooklyn in December 1960-that have been the life's blood of the photo tabloid since its creation in 1919. The book concludes with the department's worst fire of all. "It has been more than two centuries since Benjamin Franklin wrote of the love firefighters had for each other," Golway observes in So Others Might Live. "In the ruins of the Twin Towers, in the memorials for the fallen, in the embraces and salutes and unchanged rituals, the world saw the power of that love."-Nathan Ward, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Patrice O'Shaughnessy was born and reared in the city, and has been a Daily News reporter for 20 years, covering its courthouses, precincts, and neighborhoods in human interest stories. She has written extensively on firefighters, chronicling their daring and compassion in the News' "Hero of the Month" feature for the last decade. A special assignment writer, she is the 1998 recipient of the Miker Berger Award. She also received the New York Press Club's Heart of New York Award in 1999 and... read more
Book Description
On September 11, the world was shown the face of bravery. As one woman so poignantly put it: "As we ran out, they ran in." These heroes were doing the job they do each day, protecting more than 8 million residents in the area of 320 square miles that is New York City. That horrible day, we were made heartbreakingly aware of the risks these people take daily; risks their loved ones knew all to well. First-hand witnesses to the heroism of the FDNY, the photographers of The New York Daily News knew these risks too. They have been covering the life and death situations - the human drama that fire creates - since the founding of The New York Daily News in 1919. These seasoned photographers of the Daily News have chased |
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