Synopses & Reviews
As hundreds of rescue workers waited on the ground, United Airlines Flight 232 wallowed drunkenly over the bluffs northwest of Sioux City. The plane slammed onto the runway and burst into a vast fireball. The rescuers didn't move at first: nobody could possibly survive that crash. And then people began emerging from the summer corn that lined the runways. Miraculously, 184 of 296 passengers lived.
Review
"This might just be the best aviation book you'll read this year." Jets
Review
"Intense, gripping, alive with knowledge and compassion, is a new masterpiece of calamity and courage." Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Review
"A kind of miracle. Gonzales combines meticulous research, intense and even agonizing drama, and a soaring intensity of emotion. leaves one feeling exalted, not depressed, at the end of a book about a grisly air crash that spares no details. The instances of heroism and self-sacrifice in the face of unimaginable horror are countless, and rendered with a spare dignity that rises above the macabre." Michael Korda, former RAF pilot, and author of Clouds of Glory: The Life of Robert E. Lee
Review
"The definitive account . . . stands alone: for its absolutely riveting depiction of the flight's last minutes and the horrendous aftermath; for its vivid and sympathetic portraits of many of those aboard the plane, the crew most particularly; and for its meticulous inquiry into the mechanical failure." Boston Globe
Review
"Fascinating . . . a remarkably vivid, cinematic account, with one cliffhanger after the other." Washington Post
Review
"A white knuckle read, so vividly detailed that it's like watching an accident in slow-motion and being unable to look away." John Quinlan Sioux City Journal
Review
"A book that bears witness to the dead, and to the extraordinary courage of ordinary people; . . . a thriller, with a mystery at its core." Jennifer Latson Boston Globe
Review
"Painstakingly researched... A white knuckle read, so vividly detailed that it's like watching an accident in slow-motion and being unable to look away." Jennifer Latson
Review
"Astonishingly in-depth... Gonzales covers extensive territory, much of it with...obsessive detail and aplomb." Jonathan Yardley Washington Post
Synopsis
"A richly detailed story that is equal parts heartbreaking, inspiring . . . and full of fascinating science . . . masterful."--
About the Author
Laurence Gonzales is the author of Surviving Survival and the bestseller Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. He has won two National Magazine Awards and is a fellow of the Santa Fe Institute. His essays are collected in the book House of Pain. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.