Book excerpt: From the editors of TIME, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, comes an exclusive oral history of an extraordinary decade of sorrow and resilience. Accompanied by stunning black-and-white portraits by photographer Marco Grob, more than three dozen witnesses from Ground Zero to the White House to the mountains of Afghanistan give their accounts of what they saw and felt as the world changed, starting from the first moments of the attack on America through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "I just happen to be looking towards the Statue of Liberty. What I saw was a plane coming eye-level toward me, getting larger and larger. I can see the U on the tail," recalls Stanley Praimnath, one of just four survivors from the top floors of the World Trade Center. Vice President Dick Cheney recalls the earliest minutes of the war on terror, his immediate determination to "use all of the means available." President Bush remembers climbing on the wrecked fire engine at Ground Zero with a bullhorn in his hand and surveying the faces looking at him, knowing they were uncertain he'd be the leader they needed. TIME interviewed fire fighters and soldiers, widows and orphans, a general and an antiwar activist, to weave their stories of the 9/11 decade into an epic narrative of tragedy and transcendence. The photos and stories will be featured in TIME magazine as a special report commemorating 9/11 and will be the basis of an HBO documentary to premiere at the same time.