Scan barcode
A review by reneedecoskey
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff
5.0
This is the best book I've read in a very long time. At first I was skeptical about listening to the audio instead of reading it, but the audio leant something totally next-level to it. Along with the recordings of first-person accounts, the audiobook also has real audio recordings that accompany it.
I don't even know where to start with this review. The book goes through September 11, 2001, from the start of the day, through the horrific events that unfolded throughout, and into the start of September 12. The epilogue covers the days and, more generally, months, years, after. But instead of telling one story at a time, you get a little of each person's story as it happened in real time so that you are ultimately left with a 360-degree view of what that day was like -- from the survivors to parents and spouses of those who were lost, co-workers, people in the neighborhood, children at a nearby school, etc. It's such a thorough oral history.
This book is incredibly difficult to read. While some of those who recorded audio are the actual people telling their real stories (like Bush's Chief of Staff, Andy Card), many are actors who are reading a story. It's not uncommon to hear the actors get choked up while telling someone's story.
I cried a LOT while reading this, but there were two parts that made me sob uncontrollably. The first was the second-by-second stories of the first tower coming down. The smallest things people did or the most minute decisions they made that would ultimately determine whether they lived or died. It was incredibly intense hearing about what the survivors witnessed. Absolutely unspeakable horrors.
That moment particularly felt super heavy for me because I have a very clear memory of where I was and what I was doing when the first tower fell. I was on the clock at my work study job at college -- my 18th day of college -- standing on the corner, waiting to cross the street to deliver mail to the mailroom in the admissions house. I remember standing on the corner and looking up at the sky and thinking about how blue it was and how this would be such a beautiful day if this weren't all happening. I walked into the mailroom a moment later and the women were all screaming, crowded around a radio while they listened.
There's something about being able to create my own parallel timeline and being able to remember so much of it. Of classes being canceled or of professors just letting us talk about what was happening. Of uncertainty and bonding with people we barely knew because it was the first time we were all away from our families, most of us didn't have cell phones and relied on phone cards, and the campus phone lines were jammed. None of us could reach our families. We became a family, sitting on the floor staring at the television, surrounded by pizza boxes because we didn't want to tear ourselves away to go to the dining hall for meals. We slept with the television on. But more on all of this in a minute.
That particular moment in the book, coupled with all of my own memories, had an intense effect on me. First I started crying and couldn't stop, and then I found myself flashing back to that day and what I'd been thinking and feeling and then I started hyperventilating and having a panic attack.
This book gave me a legit panic attack and I still love it.
The second part of this book that really hit me was a section that breaks away from the story and tells the story of the 9/11 generation - the kids, not just in the areas of impact, but all over. It begins with a story from a young man who was 3 years old and who can remember the tv coverage. 9/11 is his earliest memory. And then it goes on - someone who was 5, and 7, and on and on, up through seniors in high school, and what that day and what that experience was like for each age group.
It ended with someone who was my age - college freshman on 9/11. His thoughts and feelings were so identical to mine (and I'm sure to many of us) that it was simultaneously devastating and comforting at the same time. One reason that I always say I can't relate to millennials is that I grew up in a completely different world than they did, regardless of what our birth years say. I remember when the world felt safer and then I remember this happening. In many ways that had nothing to do with being a college freshman, I think a lot of people my age specifically would agree that it was the day that our childhood came to a hard, grinding halt. We were just starting to try to navigate the world on our own and then literally out of the clear blue sky one morning, it all just changed.
It was 10 p.m. that night before my mom was finally able to get through and I could talk to her. I remember sitting in the hall across from my dorm room and talking to her on the phone. I kept swallowing the lump in my throat because I didn't want her to think that I was scared or that I couldn't handle it. I was trying to be a big kid. But I was terrified and wiping tears out of my eyes the whole time.
I've watched countless documentaries on 9/11 and have heard a lot of the commonly shared stories, but this book goes into more detail and describes the scene in much more disturbingly accurate ways. Anecdotes I hadn't heard before. The first responder who was trying to get his vehicle to the scene but, in order to do so, had to make the conscious decision to run over the body parts in the street. The man who looked into a meeting room at the Pentagon only to find all of the occupants were still sitting there at the table, charred to death. The body parts that he saw scattered all around. The people who witnessed the jumpers. I will never forget covering my mouth and stifling a shriek when I saw them on TV. I can't imagine witnessing them in real life. The people who witnessed them collide with the ground. The firefighter who was struck and killed by a jumper.
Read this book. Take your time with it and read something else on the side so that you're not giving yourself nightmares and panic attacks like I did, but this book is so important. It's so well done and so thorough, and as difficult as it was, I don't regret it for a second. Amazing, amazing, amazing book.
I don't even know where to start with this review. The book goes through September 11, 2001, from the start of the day, through the horrific events that unfolded throughout, and into the start of September 12. The epilogue covers the days and, more generally, months, years, after. But instead of telling one story at a time, you get a little of each person's story as it happened in real time so that you are ultimately left with a 360-degree view of what that day was like -- from the survivors to parents and spouses of those who were lost, co-workers, people in the neighborhood, children at a nearby school, etc. It's such a thorough oral history.
This book is incredibly difficult to read. While some of those who recorded audio are the actual people telling their real stories (like Bush's Chief of Staff, Andy Card), many are actors who are reading a story. It's not uncommon to hear the actors get choked up while telling someone's story.
I cried a LOT while reading this, but there were two parts that made me sob uncontrollably. The first was the second-by-second stories of the first tower coming down. The smallest things people did or the most minute decisions they made that would ultimately determine whether they lived or died. It was incredibly intense hearing about what the survivors witnessed. Absolutely unspeakable horrors.
That moment particularly felt super heavy for me because I have a very clear memory of where I was and what I was doing when the first tower fell. I was on the clock at my work study job at college -- my 18th day of college -- standing on the corner, waiting to cross the street to deliver mail to the mailroom in the admissions house. I remember standing on the corner and looking up at the sky and thinking about how blue it was and how this would be such a beautiful day if this weren't all happening. I walked into the mailroom a moment later and the women were all screaming, crowded around a radio while they listened.
There's something about being able to create my own parallel timeline and being able to remember so much of it. Of classes being canceled or of professors just letting us talk about what was happening. Of uncertainty and bonding with people we barely knew because it was the first time we were all away from our families, most of us didn't have cell phones and relied on phone cards, and the campus phone lines were jammed. None of us could reach our families. We became a family, sitting on the floor staring at the television, surrounded by pizza boxes because we didn't want to tear ourselves away to go to the dining hall for meals. We slept with the television on. But more on all of this in a minute.
That particular moment in the book, coupled with all of my own memories, had an intense effect on me. First I started crying and couldn't stop, and then I found myself flashing back to that day and what I'd been thinking and feeling and then I started hyperventilating and having a panic attack.
This book gave me a legit panic attack and I still love it.
The second part of this book that really hit me was a section that breaks away from the story and tells the story of the 9/11 generation - the kids, not just in the areas of impact, but all over. It begins with a story from a young man who was 3 years old and who can remember the tv coverage. 9/11 is his earliest memory. And then it goes on - someone who was 5, and 7, and on and on, up through seniors in high school, and what that day and what that experience was like for each age group.
It ended with someone who was my age - college freshman on 9/11. His thoughts and feelings were so identical to mine (and I'm sure to many of us) that it was simultaneously devastating and comforting at the same time. One reason that I always say I can't relate to millennials is that I grew up in a completely different world than they did, regardless of what our birth years say. I remember when the world felt safer and then I remember this happening. In many ways that had nothing to do with being a college freshman, I think a lot of people my age specifically would agree that it was the day that our childhood came to a hard, grinding halt. We were just starting to try to navigate the world on our own and then literally out of the clear blue sky one morning, it all just changed.
It was 10 p.m. that night before my mom was finally able to get through and I could talk to her. I remember sitting in the hall across from my dorm room and talking to her on the phone. I kept swallowing the lump in my throat because I didn't want her to think that I was scared or that I couldn't handle it. I was trying to be a big kid. But I was terrified and wiping tears out of my eyes the whole time.
I've watched countless documentaries on 9/11 and have heard a lot of the commonly shared stories, but this book goes into more detail and describes the scene in much more disturbingly accurate ways. Anecdotes I hadn't heard before. The first responder who was trying to get his vehicle to the scene but, in order to do so, had to make the conscious decision to run over the body parts in the street. The man who looked into a meeting room at the Pentagon only to find all of the occupants were still sitting there at the table, charred to death. The body parts that he saw scattered all around. The people who witnessed the jumpers. I will never forget covering my mouth and stifling a shriek when I saw them on TV. I can't imagine witnessing them in real life. The people who witnessed them collide with the ground. The firefighter who was struck and killed by a jumper.
Read this book. Take your time with it and read something else on the side so that you're not giving yourself nightmares and panic attacks like I did, but this book is so important. It's so well done and so thorough, and as difficult as it was, I don't regret it for a second. Amazing, amazing, amazing book.