Most observers have viewed the anthrax and al-Qaeda episodes separately, imagining the tragedies were coincident in time, but completely disconnected. In contrast, I HEARD THE SIRENS SCREAM by Pulitzer Prize winning author Laurie Garrett reveals a political, emotional, and investigative arc that links the terrorist hijackings and anthrax mailings, and shows that the combined impact impelled the war agenda and heightened anxieties among Americans. The United States of America was utterly transformed by the combination of the ...
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Most observers have viewed the anthrax and al-Qaeda episodes separately, imagining the tragedies were coincident in time, but completely disconnected. In contrast, I HEARD THE SIRENS SCREAM by Pulitzer Prize winning author Laurie Garrett reveals a political, emotional, and investigative arc that links the terrorist hijackings and anthrax mailings, and shows that the combined impact impelled the war agenda and heightened anxieties among Americans. The United States of America was utterly transformed by the combination of the al-Qaeda and anthrax attacks. In riveting form, I HEARD THE SIRENS SCREAM unfolds like a novel, revealing shocking revelations on every page. Reviewers have said: "Few people in the world could have provided a more accurate chronicla and analysis of those events than Laurie Garrett. Garrett's book is not only a superb chronicle of past events, it is also an illimunating guide to use in dealing with threats that are still current." - Julio Frenck, Dean of the Harvard School of Puclic Health & Octavio Gomez-Dantes, National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico "More than a terrific book, "I Heard the Sirens Scream" is a monument to a period. Garrett began writing on the day the Twin Towers fell. She made her way into lower Manhattan that day and most other days during the next four months. From that vantage she wrote a daily missive, as she calls it, plying her skills as a premier reporter and science writer. But woven into commentaries of heroism and missteps are her freely expressed emotions. A reader cannot help but share Garrett's grief about lost lives, her rage at the perpetrators, and pride in New York's selfless rescue workers. Much of Garrett's narrative is also devoted to the spread of anthrax spores via threat letters that were mailed in the wake of 9/11. The Capitol, Pentagon, Supreme Court, and Federal Reserve were closed because of suspected or actual anthrax contamination. Like those who unk
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