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Remembering September 11, 2001

Looking back at over 20 years of incredible journalism about 9/11, including on-the-ground reporting, oral histories, and personal essays about the day the world changed forever.

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The day September 11, 2001, is burned into America’s collective memory. And if you’re of a certain age, you remember exactly where you were when you realized the magnitude and horror of what was happening. In many ways, that reckoning has never ended. More than 20 years later, we’re still struggling to comprehend that day, and the world it created.

As we reflect on the anniversary of the attacks, we’re revisiting the stories that have stuck with readers over the past two decades. From the first anguished reports from Ground Zero, remembrances of those who lost their lives, and essential reporting that captures what it was like on the terrible day. Read, and remember with us.

Photo: Michael Orso / Getty Images

Death Takes Hold Among the Living (2001)

Legendary New York City columnist Pete Hamill‘s dispatch from lower Manhattan, published September 12, 2001. “We were gathered at a large table in the Tweed Courthouse, discussing over bagels and coffee its future as a symbol of civilization, a museum of the history of New York. About 8:45, we heard a boom.”

If You Want To Humble An Empire (2001)

TIME‘s original report on the events of 9/11.

The View from Mrs. Thompson’s (2001)

On 9/11, as seen from the Midwest.

The Way We Live Now: Lost and Found (2001)

”I never got a chance to say goodbye to the twin towers. And they never got a chance to say goodbye to me.”

12 Days at Ground Zero (2002)

They called it the Crater, the Pile, the Hole, the Reckoning, Ground Zero. There, a village formed to reclaim the ground that had been lost. This is the story of how C.J. Chivers made it his home in September 2001.

Which Way Did He Run? (2002)

After firefighter Kevin Shea lost his memory of Sept. 11, he set out to discover if he was a hero or, as he alone feared, a coward when the towers collapsed.

The Real Heroes Are Dead (2002)

The Vietnam veteran helped save hundreds of lives on September 11th, before he was swallowed by the South Tower collapse. “For Rick Rescorla, this was a natural death,” his best friend said—a hero’s end.

The Falling Man (2003)

Do you remember this photograph? In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001. The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in it, are our most intimate connection to the horror of that day.

The Miracle Survivors (2003)

In Stairwell B of the North Tower, 16 people lived amid the avalanche of concrete and steel. But surviving was only the start of their struggle.

A Cloud of Smoke (2008)

The complicated death of a 9/11 hero.

Little Noted or Known, They Bear Scars of That Day (2011)

At the ticket counter, baggage ramp, tarmac, and beyond, Logan Airport workers were left to come to terms on their own, or to try, after the hijacked flights roared into history.

The 9/11 Eulogies (2011)

John Avlon, chief speechwriter for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, led the group that spent the weeks after 9/11 writing eulogies for each fallen fireman and police officer, giving him the “dark distinction of probably writing more eulogies than anyone else alive.”

The Worst Day of My Life Is Now New York's Hottest Tourist Attraction (2014)

Nearly 13 years after my sister's death, a reluctant Sunday visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, where public spectacle and private grief have a permanent home together.

9 Devastating, Revealing Stories of Being Muslim in Post-9/11 America (2016)

Muslim Americans on how misunderstandings, stereotypes, and hateful rhetoric about their religion has affected their lives in the years since September 11, 2001.

‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’ (2019)

What the chaos aboard Flight 93 on 9/11 looked like to the White House, to the fighter pilots prepared to ram the cockpit, and to the passengers.

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind (2021)

Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11.