American Dunkirk: The Waterborne Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11
By: James Kendra, Tricia Wachtendorf / Narrated By: Peter Lerman
Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
You looking for almost-mythological heroes? Nooooo, look far away from this study of the mechanics of rescues…!
Imagine my overwhelming delight when I saw an audiobook called American Dunkirk! I mean, meeee! History buff that I am, coming across something, Dunkirk, that brings to mind images of a large and dedicated group of the everyday coming together in an armada designed to help the stranded, the desperate, the traumatized. Huzzah, right?!?
Uhm, nooooo… not even close.
First let’s start with narrator Peter Lerman’s screechy voice shouting at us from the get-go. Uh-oh, thinks I to myself: 7+ hours of this miiiiiiight hurt the dickens outta my poor eardrums. Cuz, man! Does the man have shrill tones, or what?! But after the first blast, and with volume moderation, his narration kinda sorta toned itself down, and my ears adjusted. Okay, thinks I to myself: I can handle this for 7+ hours; after all, what is to follow is a story that is soooo compelling, chockfull of the well-meaning and heroic, that I’ll get past the narration and will settle down for a breathtaking, sweeping journey of mariners swooping to the shores of Manhattan and ferrying terrified and oh so stuck victims to safety.
Uhm, nooooo… Cuz see? In the audiobook’s Prologue, the authors Kendra and Wachtendorf, make it plain that this is NOT to be a story mythologizing the heroic actions of those mariners. Rather, it’s to be a study of how people can come to act this way or that way during specific situations in order to offer services.
This is about skill sets, not people. And tho’ 900+ individuals received official recognition for heroic actions above and beyond on that day? Only about 100 were interviewed as to their recollections, so it’s not like this book’ll be about heroes.
Nope, instead we listeners are “treated” to theories and speculation based on some interviews and riffing on previously done studies about why people might choose to act the way they do in extreme situations, how crises are managed, how crises unfold in a manner that might be conducive to people choosing to act in certain ways.
Snoooooze… 9/11… Hurricane Katrina…. 9/11…. earthquake in Haiti…. 9/11…. Snoooooze…
This is about people offering to help, getting turned down, then assessing their skill sets and offering further action accordingly. Bike messengers couldn’t help in rescue efforts, so they looked at what they could indeed do, and zoomed throughout the city to bring food and beverages to those working the site of the collapsed Towers. People with watercraft did or did not hear a call for vessels from the Coast Guard and relied on themselves to offer assistance. Tug boats weren’t useful to ferry passengers, so they ferried equipment and helped that way. And vessel captains and crew relied on the relationships they’d developed over years along the wharfs to determine paths and courses of action.
I s’pose if you’re into scientific studies, this might be god-awfully intriguing, but even then it comes off as pretty basic. If you go into a situation without expectations (And in the book there are about 7 direct quotes of: “I didn’t know what was going on”—Ho hum, rather repetitive to use so many quotes for the exact same line), you’re more likely to adapt and go with the flow of what you do find. And if you’re pretty open (And in the book there are, like, a gazillion and six lines re: “It is what it is”), you’re likely to take things as they are and adapt and go with the flow still some more.
But why, then, call this “American Dunkirk”? And tag on such a dePLORably misleading subtitle? Devastatingly disappointing, I tell you. No visions of a Vast Armada of the Goodhearted, no stories of people conquering fear and setting out to help their fellow man. Just stories of this here museum-quality boat being utilized for its water pumping capabilities, and this other there craft being used to ferry to New Jersey rather than to elsewhere.
It’s all about skill sets, people…
And I couldn’t have been more bored or broken hearted if I’d tried. P’raps I shoulda just gone in with a jaunty: “I didn’t know what was going on” before I started the audiobook. P’raps then I could’ve adapted more readily and gone with the oh so plodding flow.
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