Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival

by Laurence Gonzales

Overview

"A richly detailed story that is equal parts heartbreaking, inspiring…and full of fascinating science…masterful." —San Francisco Chronicle

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.

No one has ever attempted the complete reconstruction of a crash of this magnitude. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of survivors, crew, and airport and rescue personnel, Laurence Gonzales, a commercial pilot himself, captures, minute by minute, the harrowing journey of pilots flying a plane with no controls and flight attendants keeping their calm in the face of certain death. He plumbs the hearts and minds of passengers as they pray, bargain with God, plot their strategies for survival, and sacrifice themselves to save others.

Ultimately he takes us, step by step, through the gripping scientific detective work in super-secret labs to dive into the heart of a flaw smaller than a grain of rice that shows what brought the aircraft down.

An unforgettable drama of the triumph of heroism over tragedy and human ingenuity over technological breakdown, Flight 232 is a masterpiece in the tradition of the greatest aviation stories ever told.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351262
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/13/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	245,369
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Laurence Gonzales is the author of Surviving Survival, Flight 232, and the bestseller Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. He has won two National Magazine Awards and is a scholar at the Sante Fe Institute. He divides his time between Evanston, Illinois, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

"Astonishingly in-depth… Gonzales covers extensive territory, much of it with…obsessive detail and aplomb."

Chicago Tribune - Carson Vaughan

"This might just be the best aviation book you’ll read this year."

Jets

"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."

Boston Globe - Jennifer Latson

"The definitive account…Flight 232 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."

Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

"Intense, gripping, alive with knowledge and compassion, Flight 232 is a new masterpiece of calamity and courage."

Richard Rhodes

04/14/2014
Journalist Gonzalez (Deep Survival) finds grace amid tragedy in his searing study of the fiery 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight 232: 184 of the 296 passengers survived, and the drama unfolded over 44 nerve-wracking minutes while the pilots wrestled the plane towards an airport after an explosion destroyed the hydraulic controls, a catastrophe that should have rendered the huge DC-10 jet unflyable. Working from extensive interviews with survivors and rescue workers, Gonzalez presents a engrossing, cinematic account of the crash and the ordeal that preceded it as crew and passengers prepared themselves for almost certain death. There’s heroism here, and dumbfounding twists of fate that allowed the lucky to step straight from flame and carnage into a sunlit Iowa cornfield with barely a scratch. Along the way, Gonzalez presents an absorbing account of the delicate machinery of flight—and the titanic forces it must withstand—and of the investigation that traced the disaster to a tiny flaw therein. Gonzalez’s gripping narrative shows us people at their most vulnerable, and admirable. Photos. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"A powerful, unforgettable look at a devastating accident."

Booklist

"Gonzales offers an astonishingly in-depth reconstruction of the events… destined to stand as the definitive book on its namesake… One could hardly finish Flight 232 without a new respect for both the genius of flight and the army of trained professionals who make it happen tens of thousands of times each day across the United States alone."

Chicago Tribune - Carson Vaughn

"A kind of miracle. Gonzales combines meticulous research, intense and even agonizing drama, and a soaring intensity of emotion. Flight 232 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

"Gonzales…tells a richly detailed story that is equal parts heartbreaking, inspiring, gruesome and full of fascinating science. Through his masterful reporting we come to know both the survivors and the doomed as the story unfolds."

San Francisco Chronicle - Phaedra Hise

"A book that bears witness to the dead, and to the extraordinary courage of ordinary people; …a thriller, with a mystery at its core."

Rumpus - Rachel Rose

"The definitive account of this catastrophe… Flight 232 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."

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardly

"Fascinating…a remarkably vivid, cinematic account, with one cliffhanger after the other."

Sioux City Journal - John Quinlan