Audio reward! The audio edition includes an exclusive interview with Garrett Graff and Holter Graham as well as archival audio from United States Presidential addresses, In-Flight Marketing communications, and Air Traffic Control.

NEW YORK Occasions BESTSELLER

“This is history at its most immediate and moving…A marvelous and memorable book.” —Jon Meacham

“Extraordinary…A priceless civic gift…On page after web page, a reader will encounter words that startle, or produce him angry, or heartbroken.” —The Wall Street about The Just Aircraft in the Sky: An Dental History of Sept 11, 2001 Journal

“Visceral…I repeatedly cried…This publication captures the feelings and unspooling horror of the day.” —NPR

The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001—a panoramic narrative woven through the voices of Americans on the front lines of an unprecedented country wide trauma.

Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which traced the rise of al-Qaeda, to The 9/11 Commission Report, the government’s definitive factual retrospective from the attacks. But one perspective continues to be missing up to this stage—a 360-degree account of the day informed through the voices of the individuals who experienced it.

Today, in The Only Aircraft in the Sky, award-winning journalist and bestselling historian Garrett Graff tells the storyplot of the day since it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Sketching on never-before-published transcripts, lately declassified documents, unique interviews, and dental histories from nearly five hundred government officials, 1st responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family, Graff paints one of the most brilliant and human family portrait of the Sept 11 attacks yet.

From the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet up with the ticket agents who all unknowingly usher terrorists onto their plane tickets, and the trip attendants in the hijacked planes. In NEW YORK, 1st responders confront a picture of unimaginable horror in the Twin Towers. From a key bunker underneath the White colored House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard the small variety of unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to soar right into a hijacked airliner if essential to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United Airline flight 93 make the best sacrifice in their place. After that, as the day moves forward and plane tickets are grounded nationwide, Air Push One circles the country only, its passengers isolated and afraid.

More than simply a assortment of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Airplane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how regular people grappled with extraordinary events instantly: the father and son employed in the North Tower, caught on different ends from the impact area; the firefighter looking for his wife who functions at the Globe Trade Middle; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who claims to talk about a traveler’s last phrases with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own existence when the Towers collapse; as well as the generals in the Pentagon who breakdown and weep if they are barred from hurrying into the burning up building to try to rescue their co-workers.

At once a powerful tribute towards the courage of everyday Us citizens and an essential addition to the books of 9/11, The Only Aircraft in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the women and men who found themselves caught at the center of the unprecedented human play. The result is a distinctive, profound, and searing exploration of mankind on a day that transformed the course of background, and all of our lives.