Discover the true story of the Twin Towers—how they came to be the tallest buildings in the world and why they were destroyed. When the Twin Towers were built in 1973, they were billed as an architectural wonder. At 1,368 feet, they clocked in as the tallest buildings in the world and changed the New York City skyline dramatically. Offices and corporations moved into the towers—also known as the World Trade Center—and the buildings were seen as the economic hub of the world. But on September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack toppled the towers and changed our nation forever. Discover the whole story of the Twin Towers—from their ambitious construction to their tragic end.

This is a unique history that covers the complete life of the Twin Towers: the sky-high hopes during their planning and construction, the years during which they stood at the pinnacle of the Manhattan skyline, their symbolic meaning to the city, the nation, and the world-and, in a new chapter written for this edition, their heartbreaking demise on September 11, 2001. The New York Times bestseller-now with photographs and a new updated chapter.

An account of the life and work of the architect Minoru Yamasaki that leads the author to consider how (and for whom) architectural history is written. Sandfuture is a book about the life of the architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), who remains on the margins of history despite the enormous influence of his work on American architecture and society. That Yamasaki’s most famous projects—the Pruitt-Igoe apartments in St. Louis and the original World Trade Center in New York—were both destroyed on national television, thirty years apart, makes his relative obscurity all the more remarkable. Sandfuture is also a book about an artist interrogating art and architecture’s role in culture as New York changes drastically after a decade bracketed by terrorism and natural disaster. From the central thread of Yamasaki’s life, Sandfuture spirals outward to include reflections on a wide range of subjects, from the figure of the architect in literature and film and transformations in the contemporary art market to the perils of sick buildings and the broader social and political implications of how, and for whom, cities are built. The result is at once sophisticated in its understanding of material culture and novelistic in its telling of a good story.

At 5:20 in the afternoon on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been struck by a plane and had fires on only a few floors. The reason for its collapse was considered a mystery. In August 2008, NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) issued its report on WTC 7, declaring that "the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery" and that “science is really behind what we have said.” Showing that neither of these claims is true, David Ray Griffin demonstrates that NIST is guilty of the most serious types of scientific fraud: fabricating, falsifying, and ignoring evidence. He also shows that NIST’s report left intact the central mystery: How could a building damaged by fire—not explosives—have come down in free fall?

Like David McCullough's "The Great Bridge, City in the Sky" is a riveting story of New York City itself, of architectural daring, human frailty, and a lost American icon.

Complete construction documentary spanning from 1967 to 1979. Contained within are nearly 300 color photographs which depict the former World Trade Center twin towers construction. Hands down the most extensive photographic history of the Twin's construction still in existence. Each photo has never been published before and each one is unique and extraordinary. Photographs show the destruction of "Radio Row" in lower Manhattan, to excavation and steel erection, each stage until each tower's topping out!! A brief history of the towers political hurdles and the complexity that went into building them is also included to complement these photographs. A half-century ago The World Trade Center was constructed. Under normal circumstances, The World Trade Center's should have stood for centuries. Unfortunately, they were gruesomely destroyed after only 30 years of having graced the Manhattan Skyline. This historical account documents the twins birth!!

Report of a team of civil, structural, and fire protection engineers, deployed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE), in association with New York City and several other Federal agencies and professional organizations, to study the performance of buildings at the WTC site following the attack of September 11, 2001.