This is the Mother Jones Podcast.

I'm Jimmy Licking in New York.

On today's show,

on today's show, The unbelievable bravery that accompanies unspeakable tragedy.

Today, on this 18th anniversary of 9-11, a new oral history reconstructs that darkest of days.

9-11 was the hinge upon which our modern world turned.

It's almost impossible to really understand

just how baffled and confused we were.

Taking you deep inside the events that changed the course of global history, the

untold story told by those who lived it in minute by minute detail with some

surprising lessons for today.

It's unfathomable to me how you understand America in 2019 without understanding that

Tuesday morning in September 18 years ago.

Stick around.

An extraordinary new oral history attempts to reconstruct September 11th in minute detail.

A painstaking calibration of history told by those who lived it.

It's by historian Garrett Graf, a former editor of Politico magazine, and it's called The Only Plain in the Sky,

an oral history of 9-11.

He's been reporting on politics and national security for more than a decade and spent three years collecting stories from a wide variety of people

for this book. Graf weaves together the heartbreaking stories of teachers,

first responders, airline workers, and Pentagon officials in a way never done before.

Here's Graf talking to Mother Jones D.C. Bureau Chief David Corn about his riveting new work.

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