While seeking a new nonfiction book to read, for unknown reasons I focused my attention towards 9/11. Not sure why, but I became intrigued by the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The official narrative is that Building 7 didn’t collapse due to any direct hit but rather fires that broke out in the building. Videos of the collapse look like a Las Vegas implosion (inside job). No steel framed building in history has ever completely collapsed due to fire, yet in the case of Building 7 that remains the official narrative. In my quest for more information about this, I discovered that practically the only book written on the subject seems to be David Ray Griffin’s The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False. No public libraries in Nebraska carry this book, so in order to exercise my freedom to read, I would need to shell out $20 (or try and ILL it for $3.50). Freedom to read, in the case of library collection development where choices are made by administrators to include or exclude materials for whatever reason or no reason, or sometimes just because space is limited, ain’t always free of charge. Someone might want to notify the ALA so that they can add this book to their “banned” list. For the record, I make no claim about whether or not WTC 7 collapsed due to fire (the official narrative) or was imploded or collapsed due to some sort of conspiratorial hanky-panky, but I merely would like to read more on the subject and make up my own mind. In the meantime, I did pick up another 9/11 book for today’s write up, Garrett Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. It held my attention long enough to finish it.
Practically everyone of a certain age remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing on 9/11/2001. I was at work in the State Capitol building, where many workers hovered around the wall mounted 20” tube TV in the back room of the cafeteria as the word got around. This book presents in short paragraphs written by various individuals (e.g. family members of those on the planes, first responders, politicians, those that were in the towers and got out, pilots, and air traffic controllers). Their first-hand accounts are easy to digest in these short excerpts, and capture what those individuals experienced from their own perspective. The book takes the reader through the morning of 9/11 into the day after.
On a final note, after reading this book it occurred to me that this would be a cogent choice for a book club discussion, as readers could easily recount their own experiences on 9/11 and the aftermath, which would probably facilitate a nice discussion. It seems as though there is much talk about book club participation and recommendations for and from women, but very little for men. This book could have appeal to men’s groups, or even mixed groups of men and women. This September will be the 25th Anniversary of 9/11, so perhaps something worthy of discussion this fall for Patriot Day.
Graff, Garrett M. The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster. 2019.
