Twenty-five years after 9/11, two Italian journalists who experienced that historic day firsthand are telling the story of how New York survived, changed and reinvented itself.
Maria Teresa Cometto and Glauco Maggi are the authors of "Da Giuliani a Mamdani. New York 25 anni dopo l’11 settembre," a new 208-page book published in Italy by Mind Edizioni. The two Italian authors, wife and husband, have lived in New York since 2000 and became U.S. citizens in 2018.
Their perspective on September 11, 2001, is particularly personal. Cometto and Maggi were the only Italian journalists beneath the Twin Towers that day, reporting from the heart of the catastrophe. Their coverage appeared on the front pages of two of Italy’s leading newspapers, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa. But they were not merely witnesses. Their own home was hit by debris from the collapsing towers, forcing them to evacuate.
Instead of leaving New York, they made a life-changing decision: they would stay and participate in the city’s recovery. As they recall in the book, with the ashes of Ground Zero still in the air, they told each other that New York had to be rebuilt and “needed us too.”
Da Giuliani a Mamdani uses that personal experience as a lens through which to examine a quarter-century of dramatic transformation. The political journey stretches from Rudy Giuliani, mayor during 9/11, through Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams to Zohran Mamdani.
Along the way, New York has endured financial crises, hurricanes, terrorism, changing crime rates, political divisions and the pandemic. Yet the city has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary ability to reinvent itself.
The New York described by the Italian authors is now less dominated by Wall Street and increasingly defined by technology. Its high-tech ecosystem is valued at more than $620 billion, making it the world’s second-largest technology hub after Silicon Valley, according to the book. The city is safer and filled with new museums and cultural institutions, but it is also more expensive and politically divided.
Above all, Cometto and Maggi portray New York as a city whose identity lies in renewal – a metropolis that falls, reacts, transforms and rises again.
