The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, Hardcover/Garrett M. Graff

Descriere

Description"This is history at its most immediate and moving....A marvelous and memorable book." --Jon Meacham "The Only Plane in the Sky is a stunning and important work--chilling, heartbreaking--and I cannot stop thinking about it." --Anderson Cooper The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001--a panoramic narrative woven from the voices of Americans on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma. Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, which traced the birth and rise of al-Qaeda, to The 9/11 Commission Report, the government's definitive factual retrospective of the attacks. But one perspective has been missing up to this point--a 360-degree account of the day told through the voices of the people who experienced it. Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, award-winning journalist and bestselling historian Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived--in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified docu-ments, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, sur-vivors, friends, and family members, Graff paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet. It begins in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, where we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher ter-rorists onto their flights, and then the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes themselves. In New York City, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker underneath the White House, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice watch for incoming planes on radar. In the offices of the Pentagon, top officials feel the violent tremor as their headquarters comes under attack. Aboard the small number of unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessar