William M. Arkin’s first work of fiction, History in One Act: A Novel of 9/11, will be out in 2021 & is available for pre-ordering now. Here are some reviews & praise for it…
“Bill Arkin has broken many conventions during his long career, but reimagining 9/11 from the viewpoint of the terrorists, and then constructing a plausible conspiracy in a novel that confounds even this old ice cream maker, is a real feat. It’s astounding that it took 20 years (and a novel) to finally put us into the mindset of the masterminds and hijackers. As my friend the late Adm. Jack Shanahan said, ‘We’re creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.’ This book is a step in ending that senseless cycle.”
“Bill’s creative effort to present an alternative history of the story of 9/11 is an incredibly valuable contribution to our understanding of what really happened and why, both from the terrorists’ minds and those who failed in their responsibility to protect our country. His fictionalized account relies on over a decade of research into the attack, including a treasure trove of thousands of pages of interview material with 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, to construct a narrative that gives us a better grip on this slice of history than many non-fiction attempts.”
“For 40 years, Bill Arkin has known more about the most secret corners of the US government and military than nearly anyone except maybe the CIA director. Now, in his engaging and forceful first novel, he applies all that he’s learned to help tell the story of 9/11, imagining the answers, holes, and connections that history itself will never be able to provide. It’s rare that a book’s footnotes are as rich as the prose itself, but Arkin knows it all.”
“History in One Act—Bill Arkin’s wonderful title for his novel about 9/11—hazards an answer to the question long pleading for an answer—why was the world’s greatest intelligence superpower caught asleep at the wheel? Arkin has two stories to tell. The first is about the attack itself—who did it, how and why? He delivers this story with a scaffolding of footnoted sources that would do Edward Gibbon proud. The second story imagines a reason—a secret operation—that convinces the Bush White House that everything is under control. It’s a novel—don’t ask if it’s true—read it for Arkin’s bleak portrait of the secret world he has studied for thirty years, where need-to-know leaves practically everybody in the dark, and the few who do know are wrong, but don’t really mind, as long as it’s all secret.”