“At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.” Description from Good Reads.
If you know nothing about 9/11 other than the basic facts, this book is going to knock your socks off and possibly be the best nonfiction you have read in a long time. I am someone who is incredibly fascinated by that day and the impact it has had on all of our lives. There is even a chapter that is about the youth on September 11th. There was still so much information that I did not know or had never thought about before. Examples of that would be how little I knew of what happened at the Pentagon and that the people on the ground at what would become known as Ground Zero had very little idea of what was happening around them. How big of an event it was. They did not have the privilege to be watching events unfold on television like so many around the world did.
I have to warn you that this is so much to take in. It is dense and draining as you are filled with emotions and information. I am not saying that as a fault of the book. There were chapters where I could not let a breath out until the chapter was through. Some of this was straight up horror that I hope we never see the likes of again.
We, the readers, are hearing from nearly five hundred people and what their experiences were that day. I love that this touched on so many different kinds of people: from the vice president all the way down to parents in the midwest worried about the future for their children. This is a day that touched all of us and had a massive impact on our world. I always talk about how nonfiction is a humanizer. This is humanizing this traumatic event in history. Showing the real everyday people that were true heroes. I cannot imagine how long it took the author to put this book together.
There were times reading this that I wanted to get onto the next, I almost felt selfish saying this, I was just curious what was going with other ‘plot lines’. As I said before this is a lot to take in. I almost wish the sequencing was done in another manner but I do not have an exact suggestion on how I would do it.
Writing was the only place where I had real issues. At the start, I was very confused and overwhelmed, it is like boom boom boom, getting all these names and what they went through. I was having a hard time keeping straight on who was who, what their role was, who they were related to, what city we were in. I was confused, overwhelmed by the numbers of people, overwhelmed with information. I was constantly having to turn back a page to see what was going on. I wish it was a more gradual lead into the book. It did get better the more time I spent with the book. I read this on my Kindle and wonder if it would have been different if I read this in another format. This is a great book, one of the best that I have read this year. I recommend it.
4.5 out of 5 stars.
Izzy Reads 