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

The true story 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.

• Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate (Discovering America)
• American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
• Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
• Read Harder (A Reading Log): Track Books, Chart Progress
• The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson
• Friday Black
• The Force: A Novel
• Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World WarII
• Severance: A Novel