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Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back

Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Respectful and balanced
Review: I was a reluctant to read this book, unitl I heard the author, Jere Longman, interviewed on CNN. He said he tried to focus more on the lives of the passengers of United Flight 93 - not as much on their deaths. So, I decided to give it a shot and ordered the book.

Once I started reading, I literally could not put it down. It was wonderful to gain an understanding of who the people were that fate placed on that particular flight. I valued the author's effort to provide a glimpse into their lives through the lens of familiy members and friends. Although, it didn't feel like voyeurism at all. Instead, it felt like attending a memorial service - a celebration of life and of the American spirit.

The personal memories were touching, but the book was balanced with factual information on the events leading up to the crash in Shanksville. It was difficult to read the specifics about phone calls that were made by the passengers and crew, their attempts to gather facts on the other hijacked planes, and the tender goodbyes to their loved ones. However, it is the type of book that helps you examine your priorities and reflect on relationships in your life.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Extremely Helpful
Review: I was across the street from the Pentagon on 9/11 when Flight 77 became another painful event in a very long morning. All during that week and ever since I have hoped that some writer or historian would make it their goal to document the lives of the innocent souls who were on each and every flight. Mr. Longman has done an excellent job in bringing all of us closer to the names listed on Flight 93. The information and pictures concerning the hijackers was disturbing, but it was also helpful in understanding the ease and access our country used to afford to foreign nationals. It is my hope that Mr. Longman takes the time to research and complete one more book that helps us all remember and honor the innocent passengers and crews of the other three flights.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Heros one and all...
Review: I was on the 54th floor of World Trade Center Tower 1 when Flight 11 hit. The sound of the plane's engines continue to haunt me. Like the passengers and crew of Flight 93 I too was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And though I escaped the doomed tower by the narrowest of margins I had a way out whereas those on Flight 93 did not. The book brings to life most of the passengers and crew making it a tough read because all of them had so much to live for and their deaths seem so senseless. Like the "Potraits of Grief" in the New York Times this book connects you in an intimate way with some the people who were murdered on 9/11. I thank God that there were no children on board Flight 93. Though the passengers and crew were surely frightened and seemed to know their fate they found it within themseleves to summon their courage and to strike back in a completely selfless way. For that we should all be eternally greatful.

I deduct a star because the author included a rather lengthy reflection by one of the passenger's relatives where the relative goes on about root causes and the disparity between rich and poor and the resentment that engenders. This is the worst kind of liberal pandering. The hijackers were from well- to-do affluent families, the terrorist pilot of Flight 93 owned a Mercedes Benz and was generously supported financially by his parents. There can never be a suggestion of moral equivalence, these horiffic acts were carried out because of hatred, pure and simple. We live in a free, open and pluralistic society and we must defend it, at all costs.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Amazing story of personal courage
Review: In the book "Among The Heroes:United Flight 93 & the passenger & crew who fought back" author Jere Longman tells about the amazing people who would be on Flight 93 and when face with something that no person should face, they put aside their fear and rose to the challenge in fighting back men who wanted to harm against this nation. What I liked about the this book Longman, he does not try to a make one person efforts seems better than another, instead he tells the readers about the passangers and crew lives and these experences could make them able to deal with crisis. It is a great 9-11 book that should not be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Amazing story of personal courage
Review: In the book "Among The Heroes:United Flight 93 & the passenger & crew who fought back" author Jere Longman tells about the amazing people who would be on Flight 93 and when face with something that no person should face, they put aside their fear and rose to the challenge in fighting back men who wanted to harm against this nation. What I liked about the this book Longman, he does not try to a make one person efforts seems better than another, instead he tells the readers about the passangers and crew lives and these experences could make them able to deal with crisis. It is a great 9-11 book that should not be missed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Moving Tribute & A Must Read
Review: Jere Longman took faces that we saw on television during montages of photos and made them living, breathing valuable people. They were mothers, fathers, sons and daughters... they represented the best of America and all of them more than met the challenge of the four men who hijacked that plane. After reading the book, I need not watch the endless tributes that TV will offer on the anniversary of 9/11. Mr. Longman has honored the memory of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 with a heartfelt tome.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Charged With A Powerful Testimony
Review: Lesser men hijack planes. Great men thwart them. Such were the men and women on Flight 93. In "Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back" we read the details and facts of people who rose from being mere travellers to heroes to be reckoned with.

Todd Beamer and the rest were not intending to die, nor did they expect to be heroes. Give a chance to think twice, who knows what they might've done. But they thought once, did what needed to be done, and showed us the spirit of Paul Revere is not lost in the late 1700s, but is awake in this generation. And that the valor of Bunker Hill, the courage of men who did not shoot until they saw the whites of their opponents' eyes... Beamer and company pressed through the odds against their success. Not just Beamer, though he is now the best known of the heroic team.

In forcing a plane to crash, they raised the American flag higher into the sky than it had seen in many decades. And, in the case of Beamer, it showed that a man of deep Christian faith was willing to give his life that others may live, an example for all Christians worldwide.

The details of the book bring reality to a story too easy to make into a myth. There was a real plane over a real field, and real people hijacked it, and real people were killed in the process. I fully recommend "Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back" by Jere Longman. The call, "Let's roll!" will echo through the years, and hopefully never lose its volume.

Anthony Trendl

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: One Done, Three to Go...
Review: Longman has done such a lovely job of celebrating the "heroes" of United Flight 93, that one wishes he (or someone) would do the same for the passengers of the other planes that went down that awful day. Perhaps their stories are less dramatic, but let's not forget them. They may not have fought back (and how are we to know that some of them did not?) but they deserve tribute. There is so much detail here about each person on the plane (perhaps at times too much info, a minor quibble) that I really felt I had gotten to know them. How much harder it was, then, to read about the inevitable outcome of the flight. A sad, but rewarding read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Among the Heroes
Review: New York Times reporter Longman, who covered the story of Flight 93, helps us relive the heroism and the terror of its final moments.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Winners on Land Are Heroes in the Sky
Review: No one, of course, knows exactly what happened in the final moments of United Flight 93 that crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside on 9/11. Jere Longman has to be credited with his restraint by not speculating. Rather, he reports the information that can be verified from outside calls made by the passengers and crew. Then, he presents the types of personalities these people had and how some were used to leading, organizing, and succeeding against all odds in previous situations. Longman leaves the reader to draw the conclusions about what might have happened.

"Among the Heroes" is a book about strangers brought together under extraordinary circumstances, but these stories are about people we know. They are those who we work with, who live next door, who stand up for us at our weddings, who we meet on vacations, and mostly who make us wonder what we would do if ever faced with a situation of unthinkable adversity.

Flight 93 was a plane full of athletes. They were people who wanted to win, surely, but more importantly, hated to lose, as several were described. Their inspiration came from people like Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." Another role model for one was Winston Churchill whose bust he kept and who lived his life based on Churchill's words, "Never, never, never, never give up." Another had a note on her refrigerator with Henry Miller's words, "The aim of life is to live." There was even someone among the passengers who might have been able to fly a plane in an emergency. Longman's moving account of Flight 93 makes it very obvious that the bravery shown aboard Flight 93 resulted in other lives being saved. "Among the Heroes" gives all the people aboard their just due and makes you form a vivid picture of what could have happened in the final moments of that ill-fated flight.


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