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Rating: 
Summary: Creepy
Review: A blatant partisan account by a creepy psychobabbler who injected herself into the lives of mourning 9/11 families for her personal gain. A societal parasite who should stop meddling in other people's lives.
Rating: 
Summary: Liberal Bias
Review: Dear Ms. Sheehy,I was disheartened to read your account of the Middletown
experience of 9/11. Having lost a dear friend, I was anticipating a moving story of the victims and thier families.
Instead, I read an extreme, biased book filled with your obvious liberal views about the Bush adminstration and thier handling of the 9/ll "pre-intelligence". How dare you market your book to the heartstrings of those who mourn those lost on this tragic day. Thanks to you for exploiting your ideas, I saved precious time in deciding to ignore reading the rest of your book.
Rating: 
Summary: Dismayed by the nit-pickers
Review: I finished reading this book around the same time the 9/11 Commission Report came out and am in awe of these women who, while still grieving and once considered "just housewives" to make the sure our country had ALL the facts and not just what the government or press wanted us to hear. That report is a result their preserverance and determination.
Rating: 
Summary: This is more a painting than a photograph
Review: I found the book well-written, and Ms. Sheehy's telling of the stories of these families' journeys was compelling. She did manage to accurately describe certain aspects of pre- and post- 9/11 Middletown Township. Her prose is vivid & evocative and her social commentary about present-day Middletown as a microcosm of upper middle-class White America is poignant. My problem was that, while probably not diminishing its appeal to the general reader, the book is nevertheless riddled with errors of fact about Middletown's history & and Middletown Township (an area far larger than Middletown) geography. A 4th-generation Middletowner, I left when I was 18 to join the service and have only been back to visit family. The fact that I am an African American, and that my ancestors owned a substantial portion of the land making up Middletown would surely surprise anyone who reads this book, as would the fact that streets are named after our family and a Center for local history & memorabilia bears our name. "The Story of Middletown," a book available in the Middletown Public Library, credits my Great, Great Uncle Clinton with founding this town. The ignoring of the historical African American presence in Middletown starting in the late 1800's left me cold and made me think: isn't this omission also a microcosm of America? In her history of Middletown, Ms. Sheehey either intentionally or inadvertantly committed the same sin of omission our American History books have favored by painting a picture rather than taking a photograph & letting the story she wanted to tell shape some of the facts. Nevertheless, I feel the book is still worth reading as a way to more deeply process this traumatic, life-changing turning point in our country. I have a cousin who made it out of the Twin Towers and I do hope this book proves to be helpful to her. I doubt, though, that it will have as healing an effect for her as Ms. Sheehey would have intended, given the insignificant role African Americans ostensibly play in her history of "Middletown, America," a town one of her black reader's ancestors arguably founded.
Rating:
Summary: In response to the "unmourned" spouse issue
Review: I have read this book and had an "ex" husband die shortly following a divorce after 20 years of marriage. In spite of being "divorced", I found myself identifying with woman after woman as I read these courageous stories - the term is complicated mourning. I have three daughters that suffered along with me. I find the entire issue distasteful and misunderstood. There are very few circumstances in life that warrant wishing someone was dead.
Rating:
Summary: Creepy
Review: I read Ms Sheehy's book and basically enjoyed her reporting.
Of course, I don't live in Northern New Jersey and so I didn't know about incorrect names of places and people that a reviewer from Rumson pointed out in another review of the book in this section. But, like her, the moment I find inconsistancies of fact in a non-fiction work, I begin to wonder about other facts, too... However, what I was left with after reading Ms Sheehy's book was the reminder of a rather tasteless joke by Joan Rivers about the men and women killed in the attacks of September 11th who were NOT mourned by their spouses as much as the those seemed to be in Ms Sheehy's reporting. Did Ms Sheehy not meet ANY one with a bad marriage who was secretly relieved when their spouse was killed? Did she meet them and not include any in her story? I realize this is a niggling question, and probably in as bad taste as was Rivers' joke, but I'd like to have read about any ambivilance on the surviving spouses. Where ALL the marriages in this suburb as perfect as she portrays? Just a small question. Other than that, the book was good reading.
Rating:
Summary: From Trauma To Hope?
Review: In my opinion, this book wasn't so much about Middletown, NJ as it was about Everytown, America. The few errors Gail may have made does not even come close to disrupting the spirit in which this book was written. You see this book may have said Middletown and it may have been about Middletown's residents but its impact goes beyond the borders of that township. I also lost someone on 9/11 and this book helped greatly in the my mending process. It helped me to understand more about that awful day and about myself. That, I'm sure, was the point of her story, not the spelling of street names and town lore. To reach out to those not just in Middletown but everywhere. Thank you Gail.
Rating:
Summary: Altogether terrible.
Review: What a waste of time! This book is poorly written, redundant in the extreme, badly (if at all) edited, and replete with Sheehy's liberal bias. For example, all the Moslema/Arabs in Middletown are portrayed as victims of American bias--even when one of them repeats the canard about "2900 Jews staying home from work at WTC on 9/11."
Rating:
Summary: Tasteless, Misleading, A Waste of Time
Review: With family and friends in NYC, as frequent visitors to the WTC, and most of all just as Americans, we too were devastated by 9/11. We had spent 3 hours with British friends there in August,on a beautiful clear day, perfect for countless photos. We recall they commented on how safe they felt because of the security procedures!!! Later, paying our respects at Ground Zero was necessary but painful beyond words. I thought Gail Sheehy's book would bring solace and comfort. But I soon found myself struggling to finish thinking it might get better. Don't bother. It doesn't. I was disgusted at her prying into (and psycho-analyzing!) private grief, early-on clearly from an elite-left perspective. It was disconnected, biased and just plain horrid. How unconscionable to publish this before the 9/11 report was done. The book deserves a minus star rating. I will never attempt to read Gail Sheehy again.
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