Bagpipe Brothers or Philosophy in a Time of Terror

Bagpipe Brothers: The FDNY Band's True Story of Tragedy, Mourning, and Recovery

Author: Kerry Sheridan

"I applaud Kerry Sheridan for a huge effort to bring the story of the pipers and drummers of the FDNY to national notice. These men made a decision on 9/11 when they lost one of their own to dedicate their lives to bringing honor and glory and memory to the most fateful time in Fire Department history. The world should know this story, for the band has left a legacy of love that can never be surpassed."-Dennis Smith, author, "Report from Ground Zero."

"This is a story of unfathomable heroism and Sheridan deftly delivers it with both a journalist's hand and a great deal of heart. Read Bagpipe Brothers and see if you can keep yourself from crying the next time you hear the pipes calling."-Brian V. McDonald, author of My Father's Gun. One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD.

"You don't have to be Irish to have your heart tugged by the wail of the bagpipes. After reading Kerry Sheridan's wonderfully reported and beautifully written book, I will never hear that sweet and sad sound quite the same again.-Ari L. Goldman, author The Search for God at Harvard and Living a Year of Kaddish

After the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks, an Irish American tradition of funeral bagpiping came to symbolize the sounds of mourning for an entire nation. Among the dead were 343 firefighters--some of their bodies were found and some were not. In the months following the attacks, New York City's Emerald Society Bagpipe Band of firefighter-musicians took out their instruments and prepared to bury their dead--brothers in duty and in blood. Many firefighters alternated between playing their instruments at funerals and digging for the missing in the rubble of Ground Zero.

BagpipeBrothers tells the story of four unforgettable firefighters in the band, all of whom represent the larger stories of mourning and recovery that the nation experienced in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. In addition to the losses throughout the Fire Department, the bagpipe band lost one of its own, a beloved drummer, and also lost the respected brother of a member. The firefighters' stories include searching for the dead, struggling to bring peace to their families and themselves, coping with the endless round of funerals, and rethinking the meaning of faith. It is a moving experience to see this group of very strong men deal with unimaginable grief.

Kerry Sheridan has written the first book to cover the ordeal of the massive number of funerals, the importance of recovering bodies in Irish American culture, and the bagpiping ritual, both traditional and modern.

Kerry Sheridan was born and raised in an Irish American family in upstate New York. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Irish American newspapers in New York and California. She has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Library Journal

Journalist Sheridan recounts with startling immediacy the events following the 9/11 terrorist attacks as they affected the Fire Department of New York's pipe and drum band. After setting the stage with the development of the Irish American bands since the early 1960s, providing some insight into firehouse culture and discussing several other fires, she weaves together the stories of disparate families and friends as they coped with the devastation of the 343 firefighters lost at the World Trade Center. The firefighters in the band were overextended as they played for as many as 19 memorial services in one day, all the while working at the recovery site and serving as surrogate parents to their fallen comrades' children or comforters to the widows. Sheridan's terse phrasing reflects her profession, and her own Irish background betrays a deep affection for the plight of those she is privileged to interview. The raw emotions and suspense fully involve the reader in this harrowing tale. Recommended for all libraries to sit alongside Dennis Smith's Report from Ground Zero and David Halberstam's Firehouse as a testament to the resilience and humanity of these brave souls. It will especially interest libraries in the New York area or collections on firefighting or bagpipe bands.-Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments	IX
	Prologue	1
	Introduction: A Brief History of Bagpiping and the Irish Traditions of the New York City Fire Department	3
1	Irish Fair	20
2	The Brunton Brothers	41
3	September 11	50
4	Dawning of the Day	75
5	The Funerals	88
6	Discovery	121
7	Laying to Rest	138
8	Thanksgiving	152
9	End of the Line	162
10	Holiday	181
11	Home Turf	196
12	Lost Celebrations	201
13	Closing Ground Zero	218
	Epilogue	241
	Notes	245

New interesting book: Diagnostiquer l'Instrument de Culture D'organisation

Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida

Author: Giovanna Borradori

The idea for Philosophy in a Time of Terror was born hours after the attacks on 9/11 and was realized just weeks later when Giovanna Borradori sat down with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in New York City, in separate interviews, to evaluate the significance of the most destructive terrorist act ever perpetrated. This book marks an unprecedented encounter between two of the most influential thinkers of our age as here, for the first time, Habermas and Derrida overcome their mutual antagonism and agree to appear side by side. As the two philosophers disassemble and reassemble what we think we know about terrorism, they break from the familiar social and political rhetoric increasingly polarized between good and evil. In this process, we watch two of the greatest intellects of the century at work.

Library Journal

Many assumptions about politics were destroyed along with the World Trade Center, and Borradori (philosophy, Vassar) seized the opportunity to ask Habermas and Derrida how their theories fared. These men represent two central strands of European philosophy-the one building on Enlightenment notions of universal rationality, the other suspicious of the commitments often hidden in its language. Borradori thinks their past writings show that both philosophers regard freedom as dependent on a caring society that provides the necessary conditions for action and oppose the tradition that sees freedom as dependent only on philosophical clarity and the absence of restraint. In these interviews, Habermas and Derrida do mention the underlying economic issues-globalization and the search for mastery over the world's oil supplies. But Habermas sees the outbreak of terror mainly as a failure of communications, and Derrida sees it above all as a failure to develop a concept of world hospitality to replace what he thinks is the outmoded Christian notion of a toleration that is really only charity. Despite their theoretical convictions, they seem here to see the problems more as philosophical than as a failure to integrate economics and the social sciences or develop a strategy against misery and poverty. This is a book without jargon or technicalities that should have a place in all large collections.-Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.