Five Floors Up: The Heroic Family Story of Four Generations in the FDNY Audiobook

Rescue Me meets Blue Bloods in this riveting social history of the New York City Fire Department told from the perspective of the Feehan family, who served in the FDNY for four generations and counting.

Seen through the eyes of four generations of a firefighter family, Five Floors Up the story of the modern New York City Fire Department. From the days just after the horse-drawn firetruck, to the devastation of the 1970s when the Bronx was Burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11, to the culture-busting department of today, a Feehan has worn the shoulder patch of the FDNY. The tale shines the spotlight on the career of William M. Feehan. “Chief” Feehan is the only person to have held every rank in the FDNY including New York City’s 28th Fire Commissioner. He died in the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. But Five Floors Up is at root an intimate look at a firefighter clan, the selflessness and bravery of not only those who face the flames, but the family members who stand by their sides. Alternately humorous and harrowing, rich with anecdotes and meticulously researched and reported, Five Floors Up takes us inside a world few truly understand, documenting an era that is quickly passing us by. 

 

Download and start listening now!

"In the great Zinnian tradition of books that tell the histories of times and places (and their attendant social movements) through the tales of ordinary people, Five Floors Up is about firefighting in New York the way Moby-Dick is about whaling, which is to say, down to the last scrupulously observed drop of water, and in some ways not at all. Beyond the vivid, sweeping tale of the family at its heart and the Department they faithfully served for generations, and beyond the riveting account of the events of 9/11 that fixed that Department permanently in the national consciousness, this extraordinarily comprehensive and utterly convincing book is so many histories all at once. It’s a study of the inexorable power of local politics and the competing sway of the Catholic church in New York at the mid-century peak of its parochial schools. It’s a gimlet-eyed view on American manufacturing, corporate life and building development through a catalogue of the notable conflagrations that marked some of those histories' darkest passages. It somehow becomes, through the inventive utility of a deliberately tight focus, a demographic and social history of all New York--its neighborhoods, changing economic fortunes, labor battles, union and electoral politics, social mobility, and civil unrest. It’s a history of race relations in New York in the 20th Century. It’s a fascinating study of the anthropology of civil service and its tribalistic rituals of hiring, advancement, and survival. It’s a portrait of the peculiar, irrational, and selfless bravery it takes to be a firefighter, and of the local cultures that engender and perpetuate that bravery. There are so many reasons to read this terrific book. Read it if you want to understand how New York works. Read it if you want to better grasp the rising, falling, and rising-again fortunes of cities in the second half of the 20th Century. Read it if you want a gripping human drama. Whatever the reason you read it, you'll find in it what you're looking for, and more."

— MATTHEW THOMAS, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves