The author, who also wrote the gripping Report from Engine Co. 82, does best when he lets the images speak for themselves: the airplane luggage scattered across the plaza; the waves of firemen disappearing into the stairwells; the indelible sound — like an M-80 firecracker, one man says — of bodies hitting the ground; and the moment when suddenly there was nothing but dust.
And while his first-hand account understandably cuts out when he's administered anesthesia and wheeled into surgery, I highly recommend Thomas Curwen's gripping report in the Los Angeles Times this week about a trauma surgeon who struggles to save the life of a young gunshot victim.
More memoirish in tone, it gives a gripping account of his difficulties reporting on the religion as an outsider.
The Sept. 11 staff reports, in contrast, offer a gripping story the first time around.
Hell in the hot zone Jeffrey Stern | Vanity Fair | 12 September 2014 Gripping report on West Africa's Ebola epidemic.
I met Upinder Randhawa, who had spent the previous days using his tiny broadcaster, Sangat TV, to provide gripping live reports from the frontline of the disturbances.
The journalists, who "spent two months clandestinely in the Damascus area alongside Syrian rebels," first reported their findings in an article by Jean-Philippe Rémy accompanied by a gripping video report recorded during an attack.
"Yet, no one person gripped these reports and took charge to strategically manage and oversee what should have been a targeted police response.
The city centre was a sea of roadblocks Saturday, with groups of people peering over the barricades wherever they sprang up, as the shell-shocked Nordic nation was gripped by reports that the gunman may not have acted alone.
Norway's royal family and prime minister led the nation in mourning, visiting grieving relatives of the scores of youth gunned down at an island retreat, as the shell-shocked Nordic nation was gripped by reports that the gunman may not have acted alone.
