Joshua Rosenthal

Professor left 9/11 book as legacy

Source: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070820/METRO/708200340/1003

Monday, August 20, 2007

Professor left 9/11 book as legacy

Manuscript is about her son who died in trade center blast, and pilot who crashed plane.

Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News

ANN ARBOR -- Marilynn Rosenthal was a distinguished sociologist known for her dogged pursuit of the culture of medicine, but that wasn't the last thing she studied before her death Aug. 9.

Her final research was more personal: Why was her son murdered?

For five years, she worked on a book about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Joshua Rosenthal, 44, a pension portfolio manager who worked on the 94th floor of the World Trade Center, died after a hijacked plane struck the south tower.

"She was interested in learning, intellectually, what happened," said her daughter, Helen.

Marilynn Rosenthal, 77, professor emerita at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, focused the book on two people: her son and Marwan al-Shehhi, who flew the plane into the trade center.

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