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Title details for Touching History by Lynn Spencer - Available

Touching History

The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/11

by Lynn Spencer
Joyce Bean
Audiobook
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Touching History is told through the eyes of commercial airline pilots, FAA and military controllers, jet fighters and key military personnel at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and its subunit Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), and the national FAA Command Center, whose personnel had to grapple with the bizarre and unprecedented unfolding drama of the attacks.


In a round-robin narrative in the style of Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn's 102 Minutes, Lynn Spencer takes readers right to the front lines of the unfolding drama as the realization hits that multiple hijackings are underway and then that the country is under attack. From the computer screen of the comptroller who first noticed that American flight 11 was flying off course, to the phone call from a stewardess onboard alerting American Airlines emergency personnel that hijackers had killed two flight attendants and entered the cockpit, to the battle cab of the military commander who ordered fighter jets in the air and the NASA-like operations floor of the FAA Command Center, to the cockpits of a number of the 4,500 commercial airliners flying over the United States that morning, Spencer follows the story all the way through the end of the day, when the fog of war had finally lifted and the country could assess exactly what had happened.


Spencer conducted hundreds of interviews and spoke to every key player in the airline industry and military who was involved in the major air events of the day—including a number of people the 9/11 Commission did not speak to. We hear from Ben Sliney, the man who came to work that morning for his first day on the job as the Operations Chief of the FAA and who made the brilliant, unprecedented decision to ground every commercial plane in the sky and close U.S. airspace; the military commanders who decided to override protocol and send fighter jets to defend Washington without approval; the pilot of Delta Flight 19889, which was mistakenly identified as a fifth hijacking; and the sole FAA controller who stayed at his post in the Boston Center, which was reported to be under attack, and provided the military with almost all of the information it got about the whereabouts of hijacked planes.


Based on highly detailed accounts from these interviews, as well as on the voluminous records of radio transmissions from the controllers, the hijacked planes, and many of the other planes that were in the air that day, Spencer fills in many holes in the story as it was reported by the 9/11 Commission. She also brings to pulse-quickening life the confusion, the horror, and the fierce determination and quick thinking of so many key players as they improvised their responses to a shocking new type of warfare.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 17, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400127603
      • File size: 284485 KB
      • Duration: 09:52:40

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This look back at the nightmarish events of September 11th, 2001, comes seven years after the tragedy but still describes the day with the greatest of detail and sorrow. Just when the public was sure they'd heard it all, author Lynn Spencer offers this captivating account filled with interviews and research provided by those on the front lines. Narrator Joyce Bean reads with little sympathy in her voice as she plows through the material at a breakneck pace. The accounts are touching and harrowing, but Bean speeds through them all much too quickly. Listeners will be hard pressed to gain any groundbreaking information, if they can keep up at all. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 14, 2008
      While most Americans watched the 9/11 attacks on television, the guardians of the nation’s air-control and air-defense systems had the unenviable task of trying to halt them. Working from interviews and tape archives, Spencer’s minute-by-minute chronicle recreates their heroics in nerve-racking detail. In her telling, air-traffic controllers panicked as a seemingly routine—and quickly spotted—initial hijacking metastasized into a coordinated terror attack of unknown size and direction, and tried to divine which of thousands of planes on their radars had become guided missiles. Airline pilots dodged through suddenly chaotic skies while assuring suspicious control towers that they weren’t hijackers themselves. Meanwhile, Air National Guard fighter pilots, hobbled by bad communications and misdirection, scrambled to defend against a murky threat. (Spencer’s sources insist there was a fighter in position to stop United 93, had its passengers not brought it down, by having the pilot ram the airliner with his F-16.) Spencer, a flight instructor, expertly elucidates the complexities and pitfalls of American aviation as it faced a staggering challenge.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 25, 2008
      Through meticulous research and a talent for scene-setting, Spencer delivers a minute-by-minute account of the events of September 11, 2001, through the eyes of people in the flight industry and the military. Spencer’s detailed account jumps from commercial airports to military bases to executive board rooms around the country as she depicts the events and actions of all those involved in responding to the terrorist attacks. The audio acknowledges the problems with the security system, but also the resourcefulness and determination of the many people who tried to prevent the catastrophe. At first, Joyce Bean doesn’t seem the right voice in a book dominated by male voices. In some of the narrative and exhaustive parts of the text, her voice doesn’t provide the energy and emphasis that is needed. However, her many masculine vocal projections are distinct and match the emotional projection of each character, making her performance a very strong one. A Free Press hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 14).

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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