New York Times Bestseller. This is history at its most immediate and moving. A marvelous and memorable book. Jon Meacham Remarkable. A priceless civic gift. On page after page, a reader will encounter words that startle, or make him angry, or heartbroken. The Wall Street Journal Had me turning each page with my heart in my throat. There's been a lot written about 9, 11, but nothing like this. I urge you to read it. Katie Couric The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001 a panoramic narrative woven from voices on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma. Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9, 11, from Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower to The 9, 11 Commission Report. But one perspective has been missing up to this point a 360-degree account of the day told through firsthand. Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the.