NINE MINUTES, TWENTY SECONDS: The Tragedy & Triumph of ASA Flight 529

The title refers to the time that elapsed from the catastrophic failure of flight 529's left engine to the moment the 65-foot fuselage came to a twisted halt in a hayfield in southeastern Georgia. The 29 passengers and crew (of which 19 survived) on the America Southeast Airlines flight to Biloxi had almost 10 minutes to search their character for rules to use in approaching certain disaster. Pomerantz contemplates the accident mostly from a reporter's distance, beginning with the design and fateful repair of turbine blade number 861381, through to the end of official investigation and litigation of the crash three years later. Pomerantz had the benefit of an almost complete roster of eyewitnesses, including the small-town emergency doctors, nurses and rescue personnel and even relatives of the dead. He tersely succeeds in creating a cast of mostly small-town Americans as a Lockerbie-like "crash community," their essential natures magnified by the crash ("ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances"). This tone avoids sensationalizing but often levels the event with a monotone of joie de vivre. It's Pomerantz's sharp writing and reporting that make the book so riveting. (Sept.)