Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/ 11, Spnecer - B +

                                               Thanks to Tim Farrell and Marcella for this recommendation.  We tend to focus on what happened in the hijacked planes and on the ground that terrible day.  This absolutely remarkable book tells  what happened at the FAA, at the American and United Airline Operations Centers, at various military bases, at the numerous air-traffic-control centers whose professionals who dealt with the unfolding disaster and in particular, it tells about the pilots and crews of the thousands of planes in the air that morning.  I'm not terribly sentimental about much that's happened in my lifetime, but I felt proud to be an American as I read this book. It's hard to imagine any other people handling their jobs that day as well as all the folks in this book.
                                               The book has the pace of a thriller and is filled with information I was never aware of or thought about. There were 400 planes over the Atlantic. A Delta flight was "thought' to be hijacked and treated very carefully over Cleveland. One United flight that never took off from LaGuardia had four Arabs in first class - they left the airport and were never identified.  All the flights from Asia had to go somewhere else - thank God for the Canadians. Totally unprepared for anything like this,  the FAA was able to clear US airspace and by noon, the military controlled the skies.  It's a superb book and a great story.