The Embedded Historian: William Langewiesche, American Ground

On a cold afternoon in late January 2002, I found myself on the thirtieth floor of the mostly abandoned American Express Building adjoining the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. Along with several other members of my firm—a midsize New York construction company—I was scheduled to meet with officials of the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC). This particular meeting concerned projects in other parts of the city, but if one wanted to speak with the agency's key people, they were invariably to be found, not in their Queens office, but "downtown."

The meeting was chaired by Michael Burton, First Deputy Commissioner and strategic leader of the cleanup operation at Ground Zero. After disposing of our agenda swiftly, almost perfunctorily, Burton led us to a window overlooking the site. There were signs around the office asking that visitors, in respect for the almost three thousand victims, not use the windows for sightseeing. But for an analytical review by professionals, our inspection was deemed appropriate. Clearly Burton was proud of what had been accomplished. In just over four months a monstrous "pile" of debris, much of it fifty feet tall, containing more than a million and a half tons of steel and pulverized concrete—and human remains—had been converted into an orderly construction site. What had been a dangerously unstable, smoking, mountainous wasteland, now had the look of a enormous excavation project. Numerous backhoes and bulldozers were efficiently at work, ramps provided access for trucks, and barges were docked nearby for taking materials to a landfill across the Hudson River. Provisions had been made for stabilizing the slurry wall that kept the river at bay, and plans were well advanced for repairing subway and commuter railroads, electric systems, and many other complex underground facilities.

As Burton discussed details of the work, he gradually shifted emphasis from the mechanical to the human. He spoke glowingly of how cooperation among a multitude of organizations, public and private, had overcome bureaucratic obstacles that ordinarily would have thwarted progress for months, possibly years. The terrorists' attack had been uniquely shocking; but the response had been uniquely effective. And incidentally, as just one small example of how formal protocols were being set aside, a writer from the Atlantic Monthly had been granted full access to the site, including attendance at key executive meetings. The man—William Langewiesche by name—had been living with the project night and day, and would be in a position to tell a singularly insightful story, first for the magazine, then in a book.

This casual footnote to Burton's discourse set off alarm bells in my memory bank. Back in 1981, a writer by the name of Tracy Kidder, also under contract with the Atlantic, had "lived with" a group of engineers who were designing and building a new computer at the Data General Corporation. Kidder wrote of his experience first in the magazine, then in a book titled The Soul of a New Machine. The book, which won a Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, became an international best-seller, and several of the real-life characters became, at least for a while, culture heroes. I told Burton about this phenomenon and added a lighthearted bit of advice. "Play your cards right," I said to this young, energetic, obviously ambitious construction engineer, "and you, too, may become a culture hero."

As it happened, Mike Burton didn't need Langewiesche's articles, nor his book, to achieve a quotient of celebrity. In April of 2002 he was given the prestigious Award of Excellence by Engineering News-Record, the leading publication in the construction industry, for "Creating order from chaos in leading the public-private construction team that responded to the Sept. 11 devastation at Ground Zero." Before year's end, with the cleanup project substantially complete, Burton returned—one would have to say triumphantly—to the private sector whence he...