The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001

by Garrett Graff

Recommendations from our site

“It’s a spectacular production from the printed book. It was an incredible labour of love and meticulous care, with 45 actors and Holter Graham doing the surrounding narrative. The integration of all that material is extraordinary.” Read more...

The 2020 Audie Awards: Best Multi-Voiced Performance

“It’s a spectacular production from the printed book. It was an incredible labour of love and meticulous care, with 45 actors and Holter Graham doing the surrounding narrative. The integration of all that material is extraordinary.” Read more...

The 2020 Audie Awards: Best Multi-Voiced Performance

“It’s a punch to the stomach listening to it. It’s very important and incredibly powerful and lasting. It’s a documentary that I think will be cherished as a record of an extraordinary time with these actual comments from the real people that were involved.” Read more...

The 2020 Audie Awards: Audiobook of the Year

“It’s a punch to the stomach listening to it. It’s very important and incredibly powerful and lasting. It’s a documentary that I think will be cherished as a record of an extraordinary time with these actual comments from the real people that were involved.” Read more...

The 2020 Audie Awards: Audiobook of the Year

Commentary

Over 64 fine-sliced chapters, Mr. Graff … gives us ‘the stories of those who lived through and experienced 9/11—where they were, what they remember, and how their lives changed.’ The result is remarkable, and Mr. Graff’s curation of these accounts—drawn from hundreds of his own interviews and from the reporting of other journalists and historians—is a priceless civic gift. … The book is refreshingly free from editorializing, ideology and ululation. It gives us instead poignant, often distressing, vignettes and impressions of the day and its aftermath.

Wall Street Journal

Although many years have passed since 9/11, this book, told with such immediacy, brings so vividly back to mind the shock of that day, and why it continues to shape the tragic history that has followed.

Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower