‘None of my students remember 9/11,’ Amy Zegart writes
Plus: One family’s search for meaning, the women who saw the attack coming, and more
 

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present, surface delightful treasures, and examine the American idea.

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Stephanie Bai

Associate editor

On this day, 24 years ago, as the young Bobby McIlvaine was heading to a work conference in New York City, as the restaurant manager Glenn Vogt was driving down the West Side Highway, two planes flew into the Twin Towers. For more than two decades, writers in The Atlantic have combed through the details of 9/11 and traced the arc of the lives affected. Read on for stories about how blind luck determined who lived, one family’s search for meaning after the attack, the women who saw it coming, and more.

Your Reading List

(Adam Maida)

 

For coming generations of students, September 11 is history rather than memory. How does that affect how they learn about it? (From 2021)

Bobby McIlvaine's wallet (Danna Singer for The Atlantic)

 

Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11 (From 2021)

The manager of Windows on the World survived 9/11, while 79 of his employees died. He’s still searching for permission to move on. (From 2021)

(Illustration by Joan Wong. Source: Getty.)

 

Many of the CIA analysts who spotted the earliest signs of al-Qaeda’s rise were female. They had trouble getting their warnings heard. (From 2023)

(Jose Jimenez / Primera Hora / Getty)

 

When the terrorist attacks happened, trivial decisions spared people’s lives—or sealed their fate. (From 2019)