Upon Putting Down “The Only Plane in the Sky”

Reflections from my reading

I finished The Only Plane in the Sky today. The book is an oral history of 9/11 written by Garrett M. Graff.

I ordered it from Bookmark Halifax during the second week of the COVID-19 shutdown. I felt sheepish ordering it because I have another Garrett M. Graff book, Raven Rock, sitting, mostly unread, on my shelf (I had a brief email exchange with Garrett in 2017 after reading an adaptation from Raven Rock called The President’s Secret Airforce). I overcame my not-actually-real sense of shame, placed the order, and received it on my porch the next day.

A few things stood out to me after I finished the book:

Oral Histories Matter

I marveled at the people who had recorded the stories of 9/11. I thought about how books like these couldn’t be written without the people who had collected these histories.

Big Projects Take Time

I noticed the skill and commitment that it took Graff and his team to gather the right pieces of story needed to stitch together a narrative about 9/11. I wondered if the project had felt overwhelming at the beginning and how long it took before it felt like completion was possible.