Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation: The Real Story of September 11

by Matthew Warshauer

Overview

Through a chronological and thematical approach, this book examines the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the effect on what President George W. Bush recognized as the 9/11 Generation.

By providing cultural and generational context to 9/11 and its impact on the U.S., this book is the first study to ensure that the voices of this young generation are put at the forefront of analysis. Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation answers “what happened” and “why” but, more importantly, it reveals the importance of broader themes and ideas such as foreign policy, security, patriotism, the U.S. military, and American democracy. The final chapter, "9/11 and the World," places the events in America on a global scale and demonstrates how 9/11 has remained, and will remain, significant to understanding how different places and cultures interact with each other in the modern world.

Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation is useful for all students who study U.S. foreign relations, terrorism, warfare, memory studies, and the history of modern America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032503868
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/12/2024
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Matthew Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, USA, where he has studied and written extensively on what he calls “the American paradox,” the conflicting ideological beliefs and practices of the United States.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. A Generation is Born 2. What Happened? 3. Why? 4. America Reacts 5. “Let’s Do Iraq” 6. Losing Iraq 7. Our Soldiers and Patriotism 8. 9/11 and the World 9. Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

"Matt Warshauer’s conceptual insight, his deep research, and his judicious narrative will be invaluable to the reading public, to students in formal study, and to his fellow academics. His grasp of the history of the period is self-evident…; what'strikes me, and I suspect may strike you as well, is the originality of his argument in terms of the psychological development of a whole generation of Americans. In this I was reminded of Robert Coles’s landmark work on the psychological impact of the civil-rights struggle on those who undertook the nonviolent dismantling of Jim Crow. I think Matt’s work may well rank in that very rarified company.”

Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize Winner

"Through a wealth of research, consideration, and study, Warshauer, professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, delivers an in-depth investigation of the causes, effects, and viewpoints of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington. A deeply researched, well-considered dive into the lasting effects of 9/11 and the global war on terror."

Kirkus Indie (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher

2024-10-02
An academic examination of the effects of 9/11 on the generation who were children and adolescents at the time.

Through a wealth of research, consideration, and study, Warshauer, professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, delivers an in-depth investigation of the causes, effects, and viewpoints of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington. The text begins by describing the experience of living through 9/11 and introducing readers to the notion of “the 9/11 Generation”—a demographic, the author defines, somewhat arbitrarily, as being between 5 and 15 years old on the day in question—and the manner in which the attacks constituted a “social toxin” permeating this same generation. When one looks closely, the text suggests, there is a stark “before” and “after” September 2001, and it’s this work’s goal to define this “before” period in order to understand the “after” and its attendant effects, domestically and globally. Things get forensic from here; Warshauer provides a detailed timeline of the day itself, particularly the all-important 102 minutes—the time period between the first plane’s contact with the first tower and the moment that tower eventually fell—which many readers will find not only useful, but informative. (In the morass of coverage and analysis, the simple narrative points of the day are often lost.) But Warshauer goes further back, too, considering not only the “what,” but the “why.” The book describes the ways American policy, and its worldview writ large, had been so externally focused in the late 20th century—whether for arguably altruistic reasons or more sinister aims to consolidate power. In short, the U.S. was ripe to be challenged internally, which 9/11 demonstrated. Warshauer goes on to detail the aftermath, both as it regards the United States’ increased presence in the Middle East, as well as the machinery of capitalism that it has fed.

Much of this work’s historical context isn’t newly asserted. Most people understand that decades of rapacious American foreign policy are to blame for 9/11 rather than an alleged Muslim-led “hatred of freedom,” but the simplicity with which Warshauer details the chain of events is nevertheless helpful. Also illuminating is the chapter on the history, both personal and philosophical, of Osama bin Laden, which many readers will find to be new information. That fact on its own—the relative newness of any serious study of bin Laden that doesn’t characterize bin Laden as evil incarnate—helps underscore the reason for reading Warshauer’s work: We have much left to learn about 9/11. Warshauer argues that the generation in question, which he describes as “beset by chaos, a never-ending news cycle, and toxic social media that bombards them with seemingly unsolvable problems,” is adifferent generation than millennials, a point that isn’t particularly well supported. But even if this assertion feels off, the meat of this text is rich with important questions about social trauma, political responsibility, and the violence—justified or not—humans often inflict on one another.

A deeply researched, well-considered dive into the lasting effects of 9/11 and the global war on terror.

Kirkus Reviews