I came across mention of Garrett Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky in a Guardian article discussing books that explored different stages of 9/11 and its aftermath. The list also included the Looming Tower, which I’d read a bit befor,e so it caught my interest, and as I’m a fan of oral histories, I thought I’d give this one a try as well.
Graff builds his narrative using a chorus-like approach, providing snippets of conversations about a similar topic that build on each other, rather than the extended transcripts of discrete conversations favored by Studs Terkel. Context is provided in italics at times, but by far the majority of the text allows participants to speak for themselves, offering a range of viewpoints that includes office workers in the Twin Towers ,the loved ones of the deceased, government officials on the ground scrambling to understand the situation, first responders, and the cadre surrounding the president in the critical hours of the mornign and early afternoon, as he sought to find a safe place to reassure the nation.
There’s not much to say about the writing, considering it is all transcripts, but the book is well-constructed and remains coheren in its narratives, though the individual stories can get a bit murky as we jump back and forth between participants. The overall picture was quite clear, however. This book is an important piece of history and a chronicle of events that feels very immediate. It can be harrowing at times, but is worth a read for those of us who remember the day as distant observers.