“Barack Obama called it “9/11 fever” and we all had it, to some degree or another. The winter before [David Bloom's death], I’d actually kept a notebook with me in which to jot down the numbers of the subway cars I’d ridden in, just in case there was a biological attack. I could stagger into an emergency room one day and at least hand somebody a numerical trail of where I’d been. Maybe that could mitigate the impact of the terror. Even at the time I realized it was a psychological trick I was playing on myself to regain a false sense that I could control something in a world in which somebody had suddenly switched off the law of gravity. But as psychological tricks went, it was damned effective.”

— Excerpt from Keith Olbermann’s new book, “Truth and Consequences” , where he discusses the post-9/11 changes of the collective American psyche.