Awards
- Nominated for Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize 2017
- Nominated for J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize 2017
Overview
After September 11, with New Yorkers reeling from the World Trade Center attack, Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch proclaimed that his staff would do more than confirm the identity of the individuals who were killed. They would attempt to identify and return to families every human body part recovered from the site that was larger than a thumbnail. As Jay D. Aronson shows, delivering on that promise proved to be a monumentally difficult task. Only 293 bodies were found intact. The rest would be painstakingly collected in 21,900 bits and pieces scattered throughout the skyscrapers' debris. This massive effort-the most costly forensic investigation in U.S. history-was intended to provide families conclusive knowledge about the deaths of loved ones. But it was also undertaken to demonstrate that Americans were dramatically different from the terrorists who so callously disregarded the value of human life. Bringing a new perspective to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Who Owns the Dead? tells the story of the recovery, identification, and memorialization of the 2,753 people killed in Manhattan on 9/11. For a host of cultural and political reasons that Aronson unpacks, this process has generated endless debate, from contestation of the commercial redevelopment of the site to lingering controversies over the storage of unclaimed remains at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The memory of the victims has also been used to justify military activities in the Middle East that have led to the deaths of an untold number of innocent civilians.
Full Product Details
Author: Jay D. Aronson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 2.90cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.622kg
ISBN: 9780674971493
ISBN 10: 0674971493
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 06 September 2016
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
Elegantly written and richly researched, Who Owns the Dead? is an impressive work. Aronson carefully weaves together a set of distinctive and compelling stories that offers new insight into the ways America struggled with the task of recovering, identifying, and memorializing those who were murdered in the 9/11 attacks.--Edward Linenthal, author of The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory
Author Information
Jay D. Aronson is Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society and Director of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
