Book Review: History in One Act: A Novel of 9/11

 

History in One Act is a novelization of the lead-up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It blends the actual events with fictional narratives that the author (who has also written a non-fiction book on the events of the day itself) makes up. I would describe it as a book version of what Oliver Stone did with the movie JFK. It can sometimes be difficult to figure out what is fiction and what is non-fiction, although the author does a pretty good job stating up front what is fictional and the things he discusses that are factual (even when it is blended with fictional elements) are cited in endnotes. Basically, what he does is take the notion that the US government, had it not made a bunch of mistakes during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, could have prevented the attacks and turns it into a fictional story in which a super-secret faction of the CIA was actually working with KSM, the mastermind of the plot, and allowed him to pull it off. While that would provide fodder for the conspiracy peddlers out there, the author does admit that part of the book is fictional and admits it in the prologue and epilogue.

Another thing the author does is use fictional material to fill in the blanks on things that were uncovered during the investigation of the attacks but could not be fully explained. For example, when KSM was interrogated, he said he was surprised that the south tower of the WTC was hit and that the original plan was to hit the north tower, the white house, the Pentagon, and the capital. So, the author makes up a reason for why the terrorists decided to hit both towers. He also mixes in things that are known, like the fact that a couple of the hijackers who ended up being muscle hijackers were originally supposed to be pilots but were not smart enough to make it through pilot training into the story.

As I said above, it can be hard to separate the fiction from the non-fiction, but overall, it does give a high-level overview of things that did happen and details things that could have happened. There are a ton of endnotes that would have been much better as footnotes because, much of the time, they add a ton of detail. Flipping from the page you are reading to the endnotes and back can be a pain. And if you read the endnotes after finishing the main portion of the book, they can be hard to follow. Overall, it is a good book. It is very long (over 700 pages if you read all the endnotes), so it may take a while to get through, depending on how quickly you read. Ultimately, you have to take some of what is in the book with a grain of salt and understand that the purpose was not to write a non-fiction account of everything that happened in the lead-up to 9/11.