The Skies Belong to Us, Brendan I. Koerner
The Skies Belong to Us, Brendan I. Koerner
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The Skies Belong to Us
Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking

Author: Brendan I. Koerner

Narrator: Rob Shapiro

Unabridged: 9 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/18/2013


Synopsis

In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of the idealism of the sixties, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine. Over a five-year period starting in 1968, the desperate and disillusioned seized commercial jets nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to foreign lands, where they imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner's The Skies Belong to Us pulled off the longest-distance hijacking in American history.

A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers to African despots to French movie stars. He combed through over 4,000 declassified documents and interviewed scores of key figures in the drama—including one of the hijackers, whom Koerner discovered living in total obscurity. Yet The Skies Belong to Us is more than just an enthralling yarn about a spectacular heist and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath. It is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.

About Brendan I. Koerner

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and the author of Now the Hell Will Start. A former columnist for the New York Times and Slate magazine, he has also written for Harper's, the New York Times Magazine, and Mother Jones, among many other publications. Named one of Columbia Journalism Review's "Ten Young Writers on the Rise," Brendan won a 2003 National Headliner Award for feature writing, and his stories have appeared in Best American Science Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brendan on January 16, 2013

A man should take pride in his work.......more

Goodreads review by Susan on August 08, 2013

Brendan Koerner has just written one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time. The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (Crown, 2013) recounts some of the more memorable US hijackings between 1961 and 1972. Hijacking became a real problem starting in 1967,......more

Goodreads review by Alan on July 30, 2013

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Read it in ~ 3 days sort of like a non-stop versus a layover with connecting flights. If I didn't have to go to work, well, a lot of books would get read a lot quicker! [As a passenger in ]one of the hijacked planes of that era, I had special interest in the subject .......more

Goodreads review by Shotgun on February 27, 2021

Po této knize jsem pokukoval už když vyšla v polském překladu v nakladatelství Czarne a když loni vyšlo i v češtině u kultovního vydavatelství Absynt, tak jsem si dopřál luxus čtení v rodném jazyce. — Tato famózní reportážní kniha vypráví o zlatém věku únosů letadel v rámci meziměstských letů v rámci......more

Goodreads review by DaViD´82 on December 20, 2020

Zlatá doba vzdušného pirátství, kdy byl na denním pořádku "bezmála jeden únos denně". Protože proč ne, že? Do letadla se dalo dostat se zbraní (žádné kontroly) v podstatě i bez letenky (ty se daly pořídit až na palubě), svět byl plný revolucionářských projevů od Evropy přes Blízký východ až po Ameri......more