Escape From New York The great maritime rescue of lower Manhattan on 9/11.

This Herculean effort went largely unnoticed by the media on 9/11 itself, and it was only in subsequent months and years that many people realized the boatlift had happened at all. Two books have been published about the effort: Jessica DuLong’s Saved at the Seawall (Dust to Deliverance) and Mike Magee’s All Available Boats, and for the tenth anniversary of the attacks, director Eddie Rosenstein put together a short, 11-minute documentary, narrated by Tom Hanks, about the event. (DuLong’s book has been reissued for the 20th anniversary under the title Saved at the Seawall.)

More recently, Spike Lee featured the tale of the boatlift in his HBO documentary, NYC Epicenters 9/11-> 2021½, having learned about it through DuLong’s book. Lee is hardly alone in coming late to the evacuation; most Americans I speak to still don’t know about it at all.