Undaunted: Leadership Amid Growth and Adversity

Endorsed by Former FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, Former Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force and TSA Deputy Administrator Carol DiBattiste, and Retired Senior FBI Executive Phillip B J Reid.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen employees of Baseline Financial Services remained on the 77th and 78th floors of Two World Trade Center. They were unaware that a second plane targeting the Twin Towers was about to crash directly into their offices. By the time the towers fell, twelve had survived. Four had not. Undaunted is the story of what happened to the people who made it out, and what they and all of Baseline’s employees built from the wreckage of the worst morning in American memory.

Ed Zier, Chief Operating Officer of Baseline Financial Services and author of Undaunted, was not in the building that day. A client had moved a meeting. A two-thousand-dollar flight change fee had altered his travel schedule. An ordinary business decision made in ordinary circumstances kept him away from the office while his colleagues ran for their lives. In the months that followed, Zier did what leaders do when everything falls apart. He encouraged and celebrated his colleagues’ resolve to rebuild with alacrity despite the ever-present grief. Years later, he embraced the opportunity to interview his surviving colleagues. He also approached the families of the four who were lost. And he wrote the book that honors all of them.

Undaunted is not just another book about the catastrophe. It is a book that leads the reader to what came after it. About the corporate resilience that rebuilt a company from the ground up. About the leadership that held people together when the ground was still shaking. About the vision and the valor of professionals who refused to let September 11 be the last chapter of their story. It is a book that the 9/11 memorial audience will feel deeply and that the corporate leadership reader will carry into every difficult room they ever walk into.

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Undaunted stands as one of the few firsthand corporate survivor narratives of that day. The readers who have found it describe it as a book that lingers long after the last page. The readers who have not found it yet are still looking. This is exactly the book they are searching for.

When released on September 11, 2001, Undaunted became the publisher's (Koehler Books) Number One bestselling title in Q3 2021 - in only three weeks.