Twilight Sky: Air Disaster at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

Most of the titles I've seen fall into the category of tributes, remembrances, and anecdotes. I liked this title as it bypasses regurgitated news fodder and lays out the groundwork for what happened on this significant day. The one thing I didn't like about Twilight Sky is that it's a little on the short side, but the incident remains a criminal investigation and very little detail has been officially released. This book fortunately avoids treading into the realm of speculation. Other titles fill that void nicely. Overall, a great purchase given the reasonable price, and a great place to start in trying to understand the aviation threads of what occurred. I have to add the flight maps were quite interesting.

There's plenty of information about September 11th out there, but this book is the single best source of reliable and unbiased information I've found on the aviation aspects of the attacks. It's well worth the investment for anyone interested in flying or commercial aviation. I especially liked how it wasn't sensationalized. Great book!

This is an impressive collection of facts and data regarding the four plane crashes of 9/11 into the WTC, Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The author avoids emotional pandering and instead takes the reader on a technical overview of the airplanes that the terrorists had at their disposal, pointing out some of the things that (unfortunately) made their work easier. There's many photographs of the exact planes involved while they were in airline service as well as cockpit photos. Disaster images are presented in the form of excellent maps, navigation charts, and line drawings rather than sensational photos. The content is noticeably objective with opinions surfacing only in the final chapter where the author weighs in with a constructive look at the current risks to the flying public and how agencies can do better. This book is barely 70 pages but packs quite a punch of info and exposes some facts poorly researched by the press. Having read it on October 18 I'm amazed by how quickly it was written, too. For anyone who learned a lot from the Air Disaster series by Macarthur Job, this title belongs alongside them.