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(More customer reviews)I heard the author interviewed on National Public Radio recently, bought the book immediately and read it straight through. I hardly know what to say about the book lest I trivialize such a horrible event in our nation's history. Mere words become cliches in the face of such courage and bravery of the passangers and crew of United Flight 93.
Two things jumped out at me when I read this book. First, several of the passengers and/or friends or relatives had premonitions that they should not take this flight. Second, many of the passengers changed their flight plans at the last minute and got on this plane because there were so many empty seats.
I was also taken by the diversity of those aboard. (After all, wasn't that one of the problems of the misguided monsters, that they did not believe in the diversity of the U. S.?) There were Caucasians, African Americans, a Puerto-Rican American, a Japanese student, a gay man, a married Baptist couple, Jewish folk, a disabled person, older people, young people, people on vacation, others on work assignments.
The book is extremely well written although I suspect that it almost wrote itself. I do not mean to take anything away from Mr. Longman, but a writer would have to work hard to make such a tragic event uninteresting. He includes photographs of the crew and passengers and fleshes out their lives. One passenger is on his way to pick up the remains of a loved one. Another passenger we find out collects refrigerator magnets from cities she has visited, a fact that made we smile since I have the same quirk.
Although these 40 people lost their lives, they did not go gentle. From the flight attendant who boiled water to throw on these devils to the other passengers who apparently stormed the cockpit, surely they are the best of our country's best citizens. There are goverment officials walking around Washington today who most assuredly owe their lives to these valiant passengers and crew.
One final thing. The people who got to the plane after it crashed in that field in Pennsylvania said that had they not known better, they would have thought the plane was empty, that it was as if the plane had made a previous landing and let off all the passengers. And I learned a chilling new phrase. The official cause of death of these passengers and crew was "death by fragmentation."
It is fitting that someone in this book compared the resting place of these good people to Gettysburg. In the words of our greatest orator: "We cannot hallow this ground."
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