AMERICAN GROUND - one of the most controversial pieces of 9/11 publishing - is the result of Langewiesches nine months in the Dantesque world of Ground Zero. With truth, unclouded by sentiment (NEW YORK TIMES), he documented the lives of the engineers, labourers, rescue workers and city officials as they brought order to a land of chaos, anatomising the physical details of the collapse and revealing the contests of politics and personality that were its aftershock.