What is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11

What is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 | Kenneth R. Feinberg | Clear and Moving

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What is Life Worth...

	What is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 Kenneth R. Feinberg PublicAffairs, 2005 - 213 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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As head of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth Feinberg was asked to do the impossible: calculate the dollar value of over 5,000 dead and injured as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks

Just days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to administer the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, a unique, unprecedented fund established by Congress to compensate families who lost a loved one on 9/11 and survivors who were physically injured in the attacks. Those who participated in the Fund were required to waive their right to sue the airlines involved in the attacks, as well as other potentially responsible entities. When the program was launched, many families criticized it as a brazen, tight-fisted attempt to protect the airlines from lawsuits. The Fund was also attacked as attempting to put insulting dollar values on the lives of lost loved ones. The families were in pain. And they were angry.

Over the course of the next three years, Feinberg spent almost all of his time meeting with the families, convincing them of the generosity and compassion of the program, and calculating appropriate awards for each and every claim. The Fund proved to be a dramatic success with over 97% of eligible families participating. It also provided important lessons for Feinberg, who became the filter, the arbitrator, and the target of family suffering. Feinberg learned about the enduring power of family grief, love, fear, faith, frustration, and courage. Most importantly, he learned that no check, no matter how large, could make the families and victims of 9/11 whole again.

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great book

Overall i felt the book accomplished most of what it was after. after seeing mr feinberg on television i was moved by him and how the experience made him more "humanistic" but upon reading the novel i felt it missed the point

It gave a very raw reason unto why the fund was established.

It offered great insight into how difficult a task it was

His background wasn't that bad to read about

but what it did lack was the answer to his title "What is life worth?"

It didnt answer that question and meerly glazed over it in like 3 sentences in the last 10 pages of the book.

i bought the book hoping i would see 2 books, the Victims compensation fund how he handled that and why, and peoples' reactions and i wanted the second book to be about what he has learned about the human condition, about what makes a person a person about why he feels they do the things they do, seeing so much grief one has to notice a pattern somewhere.

so in that aspect I'am dissapointed because the book failed to deliver on that, if someone wants to read about the Victims compensation fund, they are at the right place, if you want to study humanity from a person who spent 2 and a half years living and breathing peoples' lives, hopes, dreams and sorrows then you need to go somewhere else.

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Clear and Moving

Feinberg gives the reader two experiences in one book. First he explaind the rationale behind the compensation fund and provides thoughtful anlaysis and criticism of the fund legislation. This is a useful exercise even for persons experienced in alternate forms of dispute resolution.
Second, and to my mind more importantly, he gives us a vivid perspective on how the victims of 9/11 reacted to their extraordinary loss. He does so in a factual, non-voyeuristic way, but his account is nonetheless very moving.
It's a good book and it's an important book. That's not a combo you see often.

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Mr. Feinberg Reports

I thought this book functioned as a "report to the taxpayers", perhaps a counterpart to Kenneth Feinberg's report to the president, on his administration of the compensation fund for victims of 9/11 created by Congressional statute immediately after the 9/11 attacks. The writing is clear and very articulate. Mr. Feinberg does not seem to me to be self-promoting, as another reader commented, but simply reiterating his qualifications and his rationale for the way he administered this fund. For purposes of this review, I am attempting to keep my feelings about the creation of the fund itself separate from Mr. Feinberg's administration of it and his account of that process. His account of it is a very engrossing read - something that came as a surprise to me. I read it twice, once to myself and once aloud to the family. I think this should be required reading in high schools and colleges because it is an extremely important facet of the whole event (which we are still in the throes of) that we speak of as "9/11". There are ethical, philosophical, political, legal and undoubtedly many other positions from which to view the fund and its administration vis a vis history, precedent, and so on. This book is an extremely important report to the taxpayers. I only wish there could be a countervailing report FROM the taxpayers! I do think Mr. Feinberg performed good service to Congress' wishes expressed in the statute creating the fund. However, to refer to the fund as reflective of the great generosity of American taxpayers is a bit disingenuous since American taxpayers did not have a say in the creation or any other aspect of the fund. It was created very quickly after 9/11 and was completely open-ended, an unprecedented action. Its creation raises far more questions than are answered and the implication that it was used to squelch asking many questions still haunts the whole process. However, that was not Mr. Feinberg's issue; he had the statute and the fund and the victims to deal with and his report covers his purview with excellent clarity. I highly recommend this book to every American and would like to see it on bestseller lists, ahead of Ms. Coulter's recently published rant. Mr. Feinberg is obviously an intelligent, dedicated, conscientious, fair-minded man whose very thoughtful account of this particular facet of 09/11 warrants widespread attention.

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Pretty good, but I wanted more

It is clear from reading this account of the 9/11 Victim's Compensation Fund that Kenneth Feinberg is a compassionate man who bore a tremendous burden in administering the Fund. It is less clear why he alone could have done it.

This is because there is not much in this book about the legal aspects of the Fund. For example, the statute passed by Congress is Feinberg's contant response to criticism about the "economic loss" criteria for awards, but he does not quote it or even use it in the appendix. I would also have liked to read more about how the Fund differed from past compensation funds that Feinberg had worked with, such as the Agent Orange fund. Finally, for a person with such great discretion over awards, I would have liked to hear about how that discretion was exercised in some difficult or unusual cases -- not just that it was used to narrow the range of total awards.

This criticism probably all comes from my legal background, and What is Life Worth? is not a book for lawyers. In place of the technical details is a measured and sympathetic description of the reaction of the victims' families to the 9/11 tragedy -- from a person who may have spend more time talking to more different families than anyone else. This is a very valuable contribution to the history of 9/11 from a unique perspective.

While the book is a quick read at 190 pages, its emotional weight is much greater and is really its focus. Perhaps Feinberg or one of his colleagues will one day write a more academic assessment of the Fund that will satisfy the desire to understand some of the day-to-day decisions that the administrators had to make.

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