Brendan I. Koerner. (2013). The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. Crown.

Brendan I. Koerner. 2013. The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. Crown.

Brendan I. Koerner, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. Crown, 2013.

Brendan I. Koerner. The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. Crown, 2013.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: Terrorism
2. • value: us history
3. • value: True Crime
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32. • value: crime books
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37. • value: gifts for dads
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creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Koerner, Brendan I.
   • bioText: BRENDAN I. KOERNER is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of Now the Hell Will Start, which was optioned by filmmaker Spike Lee. A former columnist for both The New York Times and Slate, he was named one of Columbia Journalism Review’s “Ten Young Writers on the Rise." Visit www.theskiesbelongtous.com and follow him at @brendankoerner.
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title

The Skies Belong to Us

fullDescription

The true stroy of the longest-distance hijacking in American history.
In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of '60s idealism, 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; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when shattered Army veteran Roger Holder and mischievous party girl Cathy Kerkow managred to comandeer Western Airlines Flight 701 and flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom—a heist that remains the longest-distance hijacking in American history.
More than just an enthralling story about a spectacular crime and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath, The Skies Belong to Us 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.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: New York Times Book Review
   • content: "This material, naturally a great yarn, is handled exceedingly well... Koerner has a rare empathy, and by acknowledging the fullness of [this] strange story, he suggests a deeper truth about the nature of extremism."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Dwight Garner, New York Times
   • content: "Such pure pop storytelling that reading it is like hearing the best song of summer squirt out of the radio. Both the author and his subjects are so audacious that they frequently made me laugh out loud."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Daily Beast
   • content: "Brilliantly evoking the atmosphere of the era with its bubbling racial tensions, Vietnam War disillusionment, and marijuana fug, The Skies Belong To Us weaves a vivid retelling of America's longest-distance hijacking and its globe-spanning, stranger-than-fiction aftermath with the history of this most mediagenic of crimes... As The Skies Belong To Us so entertainingly and insightfully demonstrates, even a recent historical era can seem not merely like a different time, but like a different planet."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Los Angeles Times
   • content: "The free-wheeling, hijacking-crazy days of the 1960s and early '70s come to life vividly in Brendan I. Koerner's evocative new page-turner The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. With abundant research and a sharp eye for the absurd, Koerner transports us to a time long before anyone thought of crashing planes into buildings, when people took over airplanes for all sorts of weird reasons that were only occasionally political."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Boston Globe
   • content: "Thrums with the revolutionary, paranoid energy of the era."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Bookforum
   • content: "Koerner's book is original and riveting, relying on extensive information derived from Freedom of Information Act requests, newspaper reports, and original interviews... These descriptions, which form the bedrock of the book, are amazing."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Post
   • content: "Skillfully re-creates this tumultuous era...an impressive job of research that includes interviews with many of the central players in the drama...a gripping portrait of a chaotic time."
8. • premium: False
   • source: San Francisco Chronicle
   • content: "Koerner captures the tenor of the times with a splendid and stylish tale."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Anil Dash
   • content: "Arresting from its opening, with a cinematic attention to the details of how two ordinary kids from the suburbs got wrapped up in everything from the Black Panthers to Parisian art circles to Angela Davis to the evening news... Where Skies hit me wasn't merely in its text, but in the profound implications of its story on our contemporary issues."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Mother Jones
    • content: "Brendan Koerner tracks the duo's adventures, from their mingling with Black Panthers in Algeria to schmoozing with celebs in Paris. Predictably, their sojourn soured."
11. • premium: False
    • source: MetroPulse
    • content: "The level of detail in The Skies Belong to Us is outstanding, and it's these quirky pieces that make the book so mesmerizing... essential reading for anyone interested in aviation or the cultural history of the '60s and '70s, but honestly I don't know how anyone could read this book and not find it enthralling."
12. • premium: False
    • source: Kathryn Schulz, New York
    • content: "The ratio of astonishing facts to words per page makes this book a terrifically fun summer read."
13. • premium: False
    • source: New York Post
    • content: "[A] cracking new book."
14. • premium: False
    • source: RVANews
    • content: "Both a fascinating look into the psychology of America and a detailed portrait of the lives of two of the era's key players, Koerner has put together a brilliant piece of narrative non-fiction that often reads like an exciting caper."
15. • premium: False
    • source: Los Angeles Magazine
    • content: "The true story of young lovers who commandeer a flight from LAX to Seattle and get away with one of the biggest skyjackings in American history."
16. • premium: False
    • source: Ask the Pilot
    • content: "A thrill-ride... Koerner's chronicle of these events is exhaustively researched and staggering to behold."
17. • premium: False
    • source: Boing Boing
    • content: "Hard not to like... Koerner captures the kinetic energy of the criminals on the lam and the syrup-slow lifestyles they lead after the engines are shut off and everyone is led off the plane."
18. • premium: False
    • source: David Grann, author of The Lost Ci
    • content: "Brendan I. Koerner has meticulously reconstructed one of the maddest and most fascinating crime stories in American history. The result is a riveting and illuminating book that will hold you in its spell."
19. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 8, 2013
      Although Koerner (Now the Hell Will Start), a contributing editor at Wired, had access to only one of the two hijackers whose 1972 commandeering of a U.S. airliner he recounts here in thrilling detail, he makes the mistake of sharing the other’s thoughts, a dramatization that blurs the line between nonfiction and fiction. The book opens with a gripping scene: a stewardess aboard Western Airlines Flight 701, en route from Los Angeles to Seattle, is approached by a passenger she had spilled something on earlier. But rather than complain about his stained clothing, Roger Holder, a Vietnam veteran protesting the war, hands her a note claiming that four men with bombs and guns are aboard. The narrative then shifts back in time to provide a fascinating look at the history of skyjacking—from 1968-1973, a plane was hijacked almost every week—and efforts to thwart it, replete with offbeat details like the suggestion that all passengers be forced to don boxing gloves upon entering aircraft to preclude them from being able to hold or fire guns. The odyssey of Holder’s life before and after his act of terror, aided by his lover, Cathy Kerkow, makes for compelling reading, though carelessness about speculation is a minus. 8 b&w photos. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, the Pagnamenta Agency.

20. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 1, 2013
      A chronicle of the 1972 skyjacking of Western Airlines Flight 701. Wired contributing editor Koerner (Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II, 2008) explores the story of the longest-distance skyjacking in American history. Motivated by anger toward America (as well as his newfound interest in astrological omens), embittered Vietnam War veteran Roger Holder, along with his girlfriend, Cathy Kerkow, skyjacked a flight en route from Los Angeles to Seattle. An alleged briefcase bomb forced the airline to make good on Holder's demands, which included money and safe passage to Algeria. In addition, he demanded the freedom of Angela Davis, a communist-sympathizing philosophy professor at UCLA who had lost her position due to her political beliefs and was arrested soon after for her connection to a shootout. A delusional Holder believed it his duty to rescue her, adding a new twist to the skyjackers' usual requests for money and a rerouted flight. "Then he would fly the Communist philosophy professor to North Vietnam," Koerner writes, "where the nation's grateful prime minister would grant her political asylum." Yet Holder's carefully hatched plan soon required various split-second decisions, and while Holder and Kerkow eventually touched down in Algeria (without Davis in tow), they hardly achieved the celebrity status they'd imagined. While Koerner focuses on this unlikely plot carried out by an unlikely duo, he expands beyond this single instance to draw attention to the skyjacking epidemic that plagued commercial airlines throughout the early years of flight travel. Between 1961 and 1972, 159 U.S. flights were skyjacked. By making mention of so many skyjackings, Koerner paints a complex portrait of a war-torn and racially charged country, one whose dissenters often took to the skies for revenge. A riveting, highly readable tale of terror in the skies.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

21. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 1, 2013
      

      Though it's hard to imagine now, less than 50 years ago airlines never screened their passengers. Even after the first American hijacking--in 1961, Antulio Ramirez Ortiz famously hijacked an airplane to Cuba--commercial airlines resisted the expense and inconvenience of formal screening. As a result, skyjackings were so common in the 1960s and 1970s that they became an almost routine part of flying. Journalist Koerner (contributing editor, Wired; Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II) follows the strange and romantic exploits of Willie Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow, lovers and radicals who became international celebrities when they hijacked Western Airlines Flight 701 in June 1972, demanding a ransom and the release of Angela Davis. Their escape to Algiers and their subsequent adoption by French radicals contributed to the cachet of hijacking. VERDICT This book illuminates the outlaw glamour of this period of aviation, when ordinary men and women could command the skies, if only for a moment. For fans of aviation history and political history as well as true crime.--Deirdre Bray, Middletown P.L., OH

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

22. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 15, 2013
      Embedding a 1972 skyjacking in the technical and international contexts of the phenomenon, Koerner recounts the incident through the life of its perpetrator. Like the protagonist of his previous title, Now the Hell Will Start (2008), Roger Holder was a black soldier with grievances against the army. Mining Holder's paper trail in military, police, and legal records, and ultimately interviewing Holder himself, Koerner sets the scene when hijacking crept into Holder's mind as a spectacular solution to his problems. Bringing his white girlfriend, Catherine Kerkow, along, he grandiosely aspired to strike a blow for revolution. He demanded money, the release of Angela Davis, and transport to Hanoi. Changing plans as his crime transpired, Holder instead settled for Algiers, intending to unite with Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. Wearing out their welcome, Holder and Kerkow drifted to France, where the vogue for radical chictheir case was toasted by Joan Baez and Jean-Paul Sartrestill flourished. Following the threads to Holder's death in 2012 and Kerkow's disappearance, Koerner crafts thorough research into a perceptive, riveting presentation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

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The true stroy of the longest-distance hijacking in American history.
In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of '60s idealism, 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; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when shattered Army veteran Roger Holder and mischievous party girl Cathy Kerkow managred to comandeer Western Airlines Flight 701 and flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom—a heist that remains the longest-distance hijacking in American history.
More than just an enthralling story about a spectacular crime and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath, The Skies Belong to Us is also a psychological portrait of America at...

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Skies Belong to Us Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking

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   • value: Notable Books for Adults

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Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking

publisher

Crown

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1. • code: BIO024000
   • description: Biography & Autobiography / Criminals & Outlaws
2. • code: POL037000
   • description: Political Science / Terrorism
3. • code: TRU004000
   • description: True Crime / Hoaxes & Deceptions