"I told myself, 'Don't panic! You can get out!' . . . I believed that my positive thinking helped me to survive. I did not panic. I did not want to die, and I intended to do everything necessary to prevent it. I decided that if I was going to die, then it was God's will." 
 Female, age forty–four, seat 19D
 Charlotte, North Carolina, July 2, 1994, USAir flight 1016 
 From the editor of the cult classic The Black Box, here are fifteen riveting accounts of air disasters in which passengers tell in their own words how they faced the ultimate test of survival. Drawn from the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) own postincident interviews with disaster survivors, these case studies of what happened during total emergencies will leave readers with an indelible image of personal courage and of the indomitable will to survive. Flight crews, mothers, business travelers, and others reveal in these detailed interviews what they thought, felt, and did –– from their first awareness of danger to preparing for impact, to their struggle to escape and help others to survive. Their incredible recollections of those harrowing moments are interspersed in synchronized time with excerpts from cockpit voice recorders that chronicle the cockpit crews' valiant efforts to bring the aircraft home safely. 
 What did these survivors do, consciously or not, to increase their survival odds through a nightmare of darkness, fire, smoke, and twisted debris? How did they handle their fear? Gripping as only real–life stories can be, On a Wing and a Prayer lets readers experience the crisis and eventual triumph through the eyes, ears, and emotions of the people who lived to tell the tale.

On a Wing and a Prayer: Interviews with Airline Disaster Survivors

Engineering & Transportation

MacPherson, Malcolm

Transportation

Harper-perennial

The last victim: One man's search for Pieter Menten, his family's friend and executioner

Weidenfeld and Nicholson

The Cowboy and His Elephant: The Story of a Remarkable Friendship

In the late 1980s, a female baby elephant was born on the plains of Southern Africa. In a "cull," her family was slaughtered. Only the newborn female's life was spared. Terrified and bewildered the young elephant was transported to America to be sold. 
Bob Norris is a cowboy with an enormous empathy for animals. Handsome as a movie star, he was the Marlboro Man, with his face appearing on billboards around the world. But something was missing. When the hurt, vulnerable little elephant, Amy, came into his life, an incredible bond between the most unlikely of friends was forged.
Bob adopted Amy and through close observation, gentle training, humor, and endless perseverance, this accomplished horseman gradually coaxed Amy into overcoming her mistrust of humans, and her fear of the world. Amy became a beloved member of the Norris family, and partner to the ranch hands, but Bob knew from the start that the ultimate goal was for Amy to regain her confidence and her independence - even, if it were possible, to go back to the savannahs of Africa.
Amy may have left the cowboy's life, but she never left his heart. The Cowboy and His Elephant is a story of mutual friendship, of genuine love and compassion, and foremost, this is an American story with roots that run deep in the values and traditions of the American West.

Biographies & Memoirs

St. Martin's: Griffin

Every Alaskan king crab season, brothers Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand risk their lives and seek their fortunes upon the treacherous waters of the Bering Sea. Sons of a hard-bitten, highly successful fisherman, and born with brine in their blood, the Hillstrand boys couldn’t imagine a life without a swaying deck underfoot and a harvest of mighty king crabs waiting to be pulled from the ocean floor. In pursuit of their daily catch, the brothers brave ice floes and heaving waves sixty feet high, the perils of thousand-pound steel traps thrown about by the punishing wind, and the constant menace of the open, hungry water—epitomized in the chorus of a haunting sailors’ sing-along: “Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware, beware.” By turns raucous and reflective, exhilarating and anguished, enthralling, suspenseful, and wise, Time Bandit chronicles a larger-than-life love affair as old as civilization itself—a love affair between striving, willful man and inscrutable, enduring nature.

Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea, and One of the World's Deadliest Jobs

Hillstrand, Andy

Hillstrand, Johnathan

Arts & Literature

Ballantine Books

Chronicles the story of the scientific competition between the Allies and the Nazis to produce the device that would make an atomic bomb

Time Bomb

History

Americas

BERKLEY

Afghanistan, March 2002. In the early morning darkness on a frigid mountaintop, a U.S. soldier is stranded, alone, surrounded by fanatical al Qaeda fighters. For the man’s fellow Navy SEALs, and for waiting teams of Army Rangers, there was only one rule now: leave no one behind. In this gripping you-are-there account–based on stunning eyewitness testimony and painstaking research–journalist Malcolm MacPherson thrusts us into a drama of rescue, tragedy, and valor in a place that would be known as... ROBERTS RIDGE For an elite team of SEALs, the mission seemed straightforward enough: take control of a towering 10,240-foot mountain peak called Takur Ghar. Launched as part of Operation Anaconda–a hammer-and-anvil plan to smash Taliban al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan –the taking of Takur Ghar would offer U.S. forces a key strategic observation post. But the enemy was waiting, hidden in a series of camouflaged trenches and bunkers–and when the Special Forces chopper flared on the peak to land, it was shredded by a hail of machine-gun, small arms, and RPG rounds. A red-haired SEAL named Neil Roberts was thrown from the aircraft. And by the time the shattered helicopter crash-landed on the valley floor seven miles away, Roberts’s fellow SEALs were determined to return to the mountain peak and bring him out–no matter what the cost. Drawing on the words of the men who were there–SEALs, Rangers, medics, combat air controllers, and pilots–this harrowing true account, the first book of its kind to chronicle the battle for Takur Ghar, captures in dramatic detail a seventeen-hour pitched battle fought at the highest elevation Americans have ever waged war. At once an hour-by-hour, bullet-by-bullet chronicle of a landmark battle and a sobering look at the capabilities and limitations of America’s high-tech army, Roberts Ridge is the unforgettable story of a few dozen warriors who faced a single fate: to live or die for their comrades in the face of near-impossible odds.

Roberts Ridge: A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan

Military

DELACORTE PRESS

A new selection of air disasters transcribed from the cockpit voice recorder retrieved from the plane's wreckage.  MacPherson documents each disaster, giving additional information surrounding the events, including the weather conditions and the details of the key individuals involved.

The Black Box: Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts of In-flight Accidents

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

HarperCollins, Publishers

In 1953, in a small orange-growing town south of Los Angeles, the inhabitants pool their resources and their wits when they discover Walt Disney's secret plans to build an amusement park in their backyard

In Cahoots:: A Novel of Southern California, 1953

Literature & Fiction

United States

Random House]

Readers join desperate pilots in the cockpit as they fight gravity and time in a plane that's falling out of the sky.
Anyone who watches the news knows about the "black box." Officially called the cockpit voice recorder, the black box (which is actually Day-glo orange) records the final moments of any in-flight accident. Often it provides the only explanation of a crash - inevitably, it provides a heart-breaking, second-by-second account of intense fear tempered by unyielding professionalism.
This 1984 Quill title has been completely updated to include twenty-eight new incidents occurring between 1978 and 1996. Some are famous, like the 1996 Valujet crash in the Everglades and the ill-fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger; other disasters range from commuter prop aircraft to jumbo airliners and a pair of Air Force planes. Few have ever been revealed in their entirety, each, without exception, is absolutely gripping.
In this new edition, editor Malcolm MacPherson has, wherever possible, added weather notes and descriptions of events in the cockpit and cabin, heightening our vivid sense of being there during the final moments. Provided by the National Transportation Safety Board and vetted by an experienced airline captain, these are unforgettable case studies in ultimate emergency - authentic, immediate, filled with drama, terror, human frailty and error, and unquenchable courage.

The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents

Self-Help

William Morrow Paperbacks

Recording the final moments of any in-flight accident, the "black box" often provides the only explanation of a crash. Inevitably, it provides a heart-breaking, second-by-second account of intense fear tempered on occasion by remarkable professionalism.  The 1984 title has been completely updated to include twenty-eight new incidents. Some are famous, like the 1996 ValuJet crash in the Everglades and the ill-fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger; other disasters range from commuter prop aircraft to a pair of Air Force planes.  Few have ever been revealed in their entirety and each is absolutely gripping. Whenever possible, MacPherson has added weather notes and descriptions of events in the cockpit and cabin, heightening our vivid sense of being there during the final terrifying moments of a doomed flight.    "...an undeniably compelling work."  (New York Times Book Review)

The Black Box: The All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-Flight

Leaders & Notable People

BOOKS-ON-TAPE, INC.

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Books by MacPherson, Malcolm