Garrett M. Graff

After the first collapse:
"Alan Reiss, director of the World Trade Center, Port Authority: It's quiet except for one thing – the PASS alarm.
Det. David Brink: The PASS alarm – it's a really shrill sound and that means that a firefighter is down and in trouble and he's motionless. All you heard were these PASS alarms going off, over and over again. You couldn't tell where they were coming from.
Al Kim: It was everywhere. That's all you heard. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep sounds show more everywhere.
Alan Reiss: All you heard was a lot of them going off." (pg. 257)

In trying to fathom the enormity of September 11, 2001, it is the small details that are striking, and where a comprehensive oral history proves most useful. A human angle on those well-known horrifying visuals, such as the live news presenter in a helicopter who asks her cameraman to zoom in on those black shapes dropping from the higher floors of the World Trade Center, only to ask him to zoom out again when she realises they are people jumping (pg. 133). The cruel twists of fate, resulting in death or reprieve: The woman in New York for a one-day business trip who died in the North Tower (pg. 142); the man asked to work the breakfast shift in the Windows on the World restaurant (pg. 142); the woman laid off on September 10th from an office above the North Tower impact zone (pg. 4). The firefighter due to retire on September 12th, who died in the collapse (pg. 241). The harsh, horrifying details, like the severed head a firefighter finds at the Pentagon crash site (pg. 234), or the ones that still leave something to the imagination, like the kid's schoolbag found at the Flight 93 crash site (pg. 202) or, as mentioned above, the PASS alarms going off in the rubble.

Garrett M. Graff's book is not the most useful education on 9/11, but it is certainly a worthwhile contribution. Drawing heavily on the wealth of existing recordings collated since 2001 (based on the Acknowledgements page, it almost seems like Jenny Pachucki should get a co-writing credit), Graff weaves together a narrative of that day which covers the major events while also providing illustrative accounts from the ordinary people caught up in the chaos. Other books might be superior – 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn is the best I've read, though it covers only the two WTC attacks – and there is, of course, no greater education than the raw images and videos from that morning, but where Graff's book excels is in trying to process the day emotionally, with the benefit of what has now been more than eighteen years of perspective. Graff mentions early on how America is deploying soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq who weren't even born when 9/11 happened (pg. xxii), and towards the end there is an entire chapter devoted to 'the 9/11 Generation'.

The title of the book – The Only Plane in the Sky – hints at another strength of Graff's history. It refers to the surreal moment when – all other flights now grounded – Air Force One returns to Washington with the president aboard (pg. 307). The story of President Bush throughout the day was Graff's initial book idea (pg. 427), and if one criticism of the otherwise-superior 102 Minutes is that it only deals with the two WTC attacks, that is not a criticism which can be made here. The Only Plane in the Sky not only addresses the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and Flight 93, but also Bush, Cheney, firefighters and other first responders, the pilots of the jets scrambled to intercept the hijackers, and the hijacked planes themselves. We hear from the astronaut aboard the International Space Station, who saw the vast plumes of smoke pouring out of the eastern seaboard. We hear from the wives and husbands who talked to loved ones on board the flights, and the air traffic controllers and emergency dispatchers and even, in one chillingly innocuous encounter, the airport worker who checked Mohammed Atta onto Flight 11 (pg. 13). We hear the recordings of some of the hijackers themselves and, in another of those small, harsh moments, the pilots of Flight 175 – soon to be the second plane – as they are informed by air traffic control of the first hijacking (pg. 26).

It's overwhelming, not only in the tragedy and the heartbreak and the pity and the horror and the helplessness, but in the sheer amount of content. I spent days progressing slowly through the opening events of the book, only to realise by page 266 – about halfway through – that the chapter title was now 'Midmorning at the Pentagon'. Mid-morning. And Graff can only guide the narrative by leaving much of the story out – I noticed that de Martini and Ortiz, whose heroism is a big part of 102 Minutes, are only given a passing mention in The Only Plane in the Sky. There's just so much to cover. There cannot be too many days in history that warrant their own large tome, let alone a whole sub-genre of books and media. There certainly cannot be too many that you can write a large tome about and succeed and still never really encompass it.

I think partly the reason why it is so overwhelming to comprehend concerns something which is almost entirely omitted from The Only Plane in the Sky. Islam is mentioned only a few times in this thick book, and all but one of those mentions concern ordinary Muslim civilians expressing their worries about a backlash, or others being worried on their behalf. (The other sole mention is the reproduced recording of one of the hijackers reciting 'Allah is greatest' in Arabic as he pilots Flight 93 into the ground (pg. 173)). Whether this is Graff editorializing away from a taboo subject or simply a by-product of the medium – it being something eyewitnesses in an oral history are unlikely to volunteer – I don't know, but it does speak to a wider point. It is impossible – impossible – to read the accounts of 9/11, or watch the events of that day, with all their horror and pity and violence, without feeling a gnaw in your gut. Even from the safety of your own home, with more than eighteen years as a buffer, the feeling is physiological. You cannot watch the second plane go in, or see the people caught at the top of the North Tower trying to get the attention of a passing news helicopter, or witness the unbelievably sudden, unprecedented collapse, without feeling that physiological response, no matter how many times you view it or how many years pass. And you would think, therefore, that even the soldiers of god who authored that day, though believing themselves right and in their triumphant moment, would have a moment of pause, when watching the same events live. A moment of feeling ashamed. The realization that some people don't have that – that bin Laden watching the CNN feed with an Arabic news ticker would have felt serene, that the hijackers' hands likely did not even shake as they opened the throttle, with the silver lines of the towers rapidly looming before them, and even had the wherewithal to tip their wings to cause maximum damage – is a terrifying one. The fact that they – and many today – do not feel innate physiological terror or sorrow at the stories, images or video, but in fact rejoice and exult over them and atrocities like them, is a fundamental challenge to our cultural worldview that we've been reluctant to face. And no wonder – it's heavy, heavy thought.

It all comes back, I suppose, to those little details. Even if Graff's book – whilst superlative – cannot completely grasp the day, the small moments it compiles each contribute, pixel by pixel, to a higher-resolution view of something that may ultimately be beyond individual comprehension. Consider the small detail, only mentioned in passing on a map at the start of Graff's book, that all four of the hijacked planes – two from Boston, one from New York, one from Dulles outside Washington – were intended to land in California (three in LA, one in San Francisco). The American journey, east to west, Atlantic to Pacific, and you can imagine an alternate world, one without those soldiers of god, where four planes – by that same mid-morning I mentioned above – land uneventfully in a peaceful world within minutes of each other and their passengers go home to their families.

And then, the same pixel of that small detail reminds you that the reason all those flights were chosen was because they were going to California. A cross-country flight provides a full tank of jet fuel. That small but detailed map at the start of Graff's book also tells you that the fourth plane took off from New York only four minutes before the now-hijacked first plane came into that same city and was crashed into the first tower. Each pixel provides understanding, and yet becomes still more unfathomable. Reading about it brings a strange feeling, beyond the pity and the sorrow; an intense sort of disconnect, not as though it's a movie but like an alternate reality. That westering, that American journey – hijacked.

Graff's book is an emotional, sensory compendium, and perhaps recognising the quixotic nature of what he has taken on, he spends a few pages at the start of The Only Plane in the Sky with some of the day's eyewitnesses, as they talk about just how perfectly blue that sky was. A storm had passed over the east coast the previous night – in one of those fatefully macabre coincidences, someone recorded it from inside the World Trade Centre – and it produced a meteorological effect of cloudless, crystal blue known as 'severe clear' (pp9-12). Graff is right to pause on it for a while, because it sets the tone for everything that follows. It is something that can be explained – intuitively, rationally, comprehensively – and yet, that severe clarity still perplexes us to this day. show less

this is seriously intense. i don't really consider myself that much of a patriot and i wasn't personally substantially affected by the events of 9/11, but this had me crying for at least the first 8 or 9 hours i listened, at least half the book, and then over and over again throughout the rest.

this is really well put together - it's not the most informative, in terms of detailed information, book that i'm sure is out there about what happened that day. but i suspect it is the most show more comprehensive in terms of emotional understanding. he put together the stories and timelines of so many people to explain what was happening and how it was affecting everyone in real time. it's super intense. and it has enough of those detailed tidbits of info for someone who doesn't know much specifically about that day. it's an incredible wealth of stories and oral history, an impressive compilation that i would imagine is one of the more important records of this tragic event.

it highlights the best in america, and in her people, while only hinting at the underside. there is just a voice or two that starts to talk about how quickly people of arab descent started to be suspect (like hours, before we - the public, i mean - knew who perpetrated the attack). but there are many voices about the selfless and brave men and women - uniformed and not - who either stopped to help people or went into the buildings to help people. people who thought they'd die that day if they helped, and some did die, but they helped anyway. some of these people were firemen, policemen, pilots, and other uniformed men and women, but some were just civilians, and they all responded with the opposite of the new york stereotype - with such interest and compassion for each other. the way they banded together and worked together and helped each other was nothing short of incredible. the instincts they acted on, to just go, save people, save whoever they could. absolute heroes. and the people who came to help - civilians who brought water/food, people who came to help search at ground zero, people who brought boats to help evacuate the city. ("...a makeshift, unorganized armada of more than 130 ferries, pleasure yachts, sight-seeing vessels, coast guard and police vessels, fire boats, and tug boats gathered, many without being asked, at Battery Park and nearby piers. By the end of the day they had collectively evacuated somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people from Manhattan, a maritime rescue larger than the World War II evacuation from Dunkirk.")

the stories of these heroes - just a line here and there, even - is maybe too hard to quote without more context, but it's what will stay with me. that and the contrast between the way george bush's administration handled this event and the way trump is handling his current crisis/would have handled something like this. i was no fan of bush and until trump would have said he was our worst president, but my god, he was presidential during this time and he had to fight for hours with his secret service to get him back to washington because he was insisting they bring him back there and they refused to bring him back. (it's literally impossible to even imagine anyone high up in the trump administration acting with such calm levelheadedness.) this is all i kept thinking about, through my emotions, while listening to this. how vulnerable we are right now as a nation, because we would not be able to muster a cohesive reaction like we did then. while bush was awful, he was able to be a leader. he is a leader i largely disagree with, but he's a leader. what chaos would happen if this happened now. and, secondarily, how much worse it could have been then. had they targeted a few other buildings or cities, or...

but this book is incredible. the piece of history it describes needs to be remembered, and it does it in a way that will help with that, and touch people, no matter where they were that day or how old they were, or if they weren't alive yet when it happened.

as an audio, it's excellent. the main narrator is perfect. there is a large cast of voices reading the stories, and most of them are wonderful. i only wish that they hadn't reused some of the stand-out voices, or that they made it more clear that the people's stories they were reading were different people (it went all over the place, very effectively, from talking about the towers to the pentagon to the civilians, and so it was sometimes hard to know if the familiar voice we were hearing was the same person they'd voiced before, or a different person now, as many of the voice actors read multiple parts.) it also would have been interesting for them to have, for the audio recording, used some of the reporting footage from that day. i think that would have enhanced it. maybe it would have made it hard, later, to read the words of some of those reporters using an actor; maybe that's why they didn't do it, when they did play recordings from the faa and presidents bush and obama (and wow what it feels like to hear a leader speak in a time of crisis).

this is a comprehensive history that should probably be required reading/listening. show less

The Only Plane in the Sky - An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff presents a minute by minute picture of 11 September 2001 from the lived experience of countless people connected to the events at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that day. These include accounts from those who evacuated the buildings, those who were trapped and those who survived the collapse. It also includes testimonies from first responders, hospital staff, air traffic control, US military, passengers on Air show more Force One and more. In addition, the accounts from people whose loved ones died on the hijacked planes or in the Twin Towers and Pentagon are also included.

These accounts have been gathered meticulously from original interviews, recently declassified documents, never-before-published transcripts, previously published books and oral histories from almost five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends and family members. It also includes real radio transmissions from the hijacked planes.

The accounts have then been sorted chronologically so that in addition to the overarching narrative, we get perhaps 1 minute of this person's perspective, then 2-3 minutes of that person's experience and so on. The audiobook has been narrated by different actors who are reading all of these first person testimonials and accounts.

I'd heard this audiobook was a unique listening experience but I didn't think this choppy format was going to work for me. Still, I gave it a chance but was worried I'd find the snippets of introduction before each 'entry' distracting (e.g. Gordon Johndroe, Assistant Press Secretary, White House / Bruno Dellinger, Principal, Quint Amasis North America, North Tower, 47th Floor).

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find this was an effective means of communicating the events of the day and the rhythm of entries meant the reader could pause their listening at any point and easily pick it up again. The audiobook is just under 16 hours in duration and the accounts aren't one offs as we return to the individual perspectives according to the day's progression.

Once I realised I didn't need to remember the full cast I was able to concentrate purely on their testimonies, like this one*:

"As I hit Vesey [Street] between Church and Broadway, the first thing that struck me was the amount of women's shoes. I couldn't understand it. Then I realised women had run out of their shoes, the high heels and what have you. There were women's shoes all over." James Luongo, Inspector NYPD, Chapter: World Trade Centre Evacuation

I didn't know that many witnesses heard shots fired at the World Trade Centre during the evacuation phase which understandably created concern as it was believed terrorists were shooting civilians as they were running out of the building. It was later confirmed to be Police Officers shooting out the lobby windows so people could escape the building quicker but you can just imagine the fear and confusion at the scene.

On September 11 2001, I was up late watching the news in Australia and remember seeing the events unfold live on TV after the first plane hit the North Tower. Images of people waving items out of the windows above the impact zone was haunting, as was the realisation that some of them were jumping to escape the heat and smoke. In this audiobook, a person on the street recalled the sound of falling bodies resembling the fierce flapping of flags in the wind, growing louder as they neared the ground.

You might imagine reading or listening to these testimonies would be depressing after a few chapters, but while I did find it a sobering subject I was also inspired by the bravery and courage witnessed on the day. It also helped me to better understand the confusion and chaos of the events as they unfolded around the country. I watched live on TV as the Pentagon was hit and when both towers fell, and perhaps that's the reason I'm still moved by the events some 24 years later. I'm not interested in the political climate, who was to blame or the military retaliation that followed, but the examples of fortitude displayed by everyday people in the hope I could do the same if it ever came down to it.

The Only Plane in the Sky - An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff is powerful and touching and recommended for readers interested in the personal stories of those who unexpectedly found themselves involved in an unforgettable - and previously unimaginable - terrorist attack.

* In researching the spelling of James Luongo NYPD for this review, I came across the September 11 Digital Archive where you can listen to his testimony of the events along with many others. show less

I read Raven Rock right after Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (which I recommend), which made for some enlightening moments of reading the same events from different perspectives. Eisenhower's predelegation of nuclear weapons authority, for example, comes across quite differently when it's discovered in the field vs. evolved from the president's concerns. Add Eric Schlosser's Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the show more Illusion of Safety, and we're now far enough from the Cold War to have a set of accessible histories of the era that give more of the picture of just how dangerous it was.

Ellsberg: The plan was to kill everybody in response to any active war with the Soviets.
Schlosser: We came a lot closer to accidental war than we knew, and we also almost nuked ourselves a few times.
Graff: Your plan to escape to the wilderness was futile because the Soviets knew about, and presumably targeted, the secret bunkers you didn't know were in the same hills.
Ellsberg, again: Nuclear war plans were going to kill everyone, anyway.

I've read heavier books and papers about nuclear weapons strategy over the years, but these books have provided the context that was always secret. Let's call it, seeing the challenge with fresh eyes. show less