The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett Graff *** (of 4)

 

By 2015, one-quarter of Americans were born after, or were too young to recall, the 9/11 attacks. This year, aside from some of the students in the senior class, the remainder of America's college students were born in the aftermath of the attacks and have always know of America's ongoing war on terror and the hassle of TSA at the airport.

For those who can recall the images of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center, reading Garrett Graff's recounting is an act of courage. Using excerpts from nearly 4,000 oral histories, Graff has assembled a minute-by-minute account of a cloudless, super-clear day in September, perceived by the people who lived it. The airport staff tell us what it was like to check in the terrorists at Logan airport. F-16 pilots with the National Guard explain what it means to receive an order to launch as quickly as possible from airfields in Massachusetts, at first to protect America's skies from unknown intruders and soon thereafter to receive orders to shoot down any American airplane that appeared to be heading for danger. President Bush's chief of staff explains his attempts to protect the President at all costs - flying Air Force One around America in hopes that being the only plane in the sky would be sufficient - and then to keep the country functioning while under attack. There are countless stories of New York firefighters heading up the stairwells of the world's tallest building to rescue thousands of civilians, and anguished recordings of wives and husbands searching for partners they knew were at work in the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, or on flights whose call numbers were now officially listed among the crashed.

Knowing what is coming as Graff skillfully aligns the chronology of reports is breathtakingly frightening and a valuable history for those too young to have fully understood the impact of the day. While the task of creating a page turner using nothing but quotes is extraordinary journalism, once the towers have collapsed, Flight 93 was forced down into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon fires were brought under control, and President Bush was safely returned to Washington, D.C., all by the end of the day, The Only Plane in the Sky loses some narrative urgency. The aftermath included America's response: an unwarranted war in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan that have continued so long that the patriots who signed up to defend America in 2001 are now parents of children fighting in those same wars.