The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

I gave this book to my wife for Christmas. She always wanted to read the 9/11 Report but it was too thick of a book. The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is a great compliment. It uses illustrations to help visually with what was happening.

This is a brilliant idea, and I think more official reports should be handled in this forward-thinking manner if we are to ever get the average citizen (especially youth) interested in current affairs at all. Presenting information in a way that's not only easy to understand, but compelling and visually interesting is the very first challenge of design, and I think this book totally nails the concept. The artwork is also pretty good (not completely mesmerizing, but efficient and direct in its own right -- and, to be fair, having artwork that's too dramatic/experimental would probably go sailing over the precarious line they tread by presenting this information in comic form). Having said that, a serious complaint of mine is that the actual physical design of the book is very poor -- the cover artwork is extremely amateur and doesn't reflect at all the immense importance of the report or the fact that it's being presented in this incredibly unique way. This is very frustrating, as the book is struggling to be, and should be, taken seriously in its own right. The book could also stand to be about an inch to an inch and a half bigger on all sides; the artwork fairly often ends up trapped in the gutter (the area closest to the spine) and thus becomes completely unreadable. Again, an amateur mistake that detracts from the story that needs to be told. Hopefully in future editions, these problems will be corrected so that what is now a brilliant but flawed book can become a truly engaging and stimulating piece of historical literature that readers will be excited to keep in their libraries and share with others.

The 9/11 Commission Report has been amply rebutted, and members of the 9/11 Commission have not answered the several dozen ommissions and distortions identified by independent researchers. A good starting point for viewing the work of these researchers is the multimedia presentation "Fatally Flawed: The 9/11 Commission Report." In fact there is prima facie evidence for the use of expertly placed explosives to cause the collapse of 1, 2, and 7 World Trade Center.

This is a graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Commission Report, as released by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. It is an abridgment of the original report, in comic book form. I would imagine that it's easier to follow than the original report, not that I read the original. The drawings are excellent to be sure. One problem I had with the book is that the text boxes are sometimes positioned in a way that makes it unclear in which order to read them. Overall though, it's a very well put together book. But when all is said and done, it's still a government report, which isn't the most interesting thing in the world to read. Very educational, though.

I have the government 9/11 report and while it is interesting, disturbing, and many other things that I will not go into now, the reading of the white book it was very dry at times. This graphic adaptation book provides a good short cut, having said that it is no substitute for the "white" book. This is the classic comic we all used when we did not read the assigned homework at school and hoped we could bluff our way through.