After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era

Steven Brill

Apr 2003 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris

About this audiobook

After is an astounding, inspiring, and exciting account of America in the first year of the September 12th era. Based on 347 on-the-record interviews and revelations from memos of government meetings, court filings and other documents, award winning journalist Steven Brill takes us inside the critical dramas of the year after the September 11 attacks -- from the Justice Department's drive to find terror cells, to Congress's decision to bail out the airline industry, to a Ground Zero real estate mogul's audacious plan to litigate his way to an extra $3.5 billion in insurance proceeds.
In After we go inside the late night audiences that lobbyists get with congressional leaders like Tom DeLay. We're in the White House sub-basement as the mammoth Department of Homeland Security is patched together, agency by agency. And we're in a young widow's living room as she struggles to hold her family together and make sense of the various charities and government funds that may be available to her.
But beyond being a masterpiece of reporting, After is a riveting narrative of people -- some well known, others not known at all -- facing the defining challenge of their lives. As their paths cross in a series of surprising alliances and confrontations, Brill finds in their stories the answer to how America changed and prevailed.
After is an indelible picture of America and Americans battling their way through a time of crisis. And we see that Americans and their country were anything but soft when it came to standing up the morning after.

About the author

Steven Brill is the founder of Journalism Online, a company designed to create a new, viable business model for journalism to flourish online. He is a feature writer for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and TIME. Brill founded the Yale Journalism Initiative, which recruits and trains journalists. He founded and ran Court TV, The American Lawyer Magazine, and Brill's Content Magazine. He is the author of After: How America Confronted the September 12th Era and The Teamsters.

Dennis Boutsikaris won an OBIE Award for his performance in Sight Unseen and played Mozart in Amadeus on Broadway. Among his films are *batteries not included, The Dream Team, and Boys On the Side. His many television credits include And Then There Was One, Chasing the Dragon, and 100 Center Street.