The Day the World Came to Town Updated Edition: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland

We just saw the musical last week and I wanted to know more. The book is well written and I appreciated getting to know everyone better. The epilogue was helpful because I wondered how everyone's lives changed. It was a quick and easy read. A really inspiring book for these challenging times.

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede 4 stars pp. 260 Sometimes it seems important to read something that reminds us that there are good people in the world and much still to be thankful for. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede is one such book. DeFede offers the reader a chance to immerse herself in the town of Gander, Newfoundland during that horrible week of September 11, 2001. We follow a number of passengers on different planes which would eventually land at Gander until they return to there homes a week or more later. One can appreciate DeFede retelling in a matter of fact blow by blow reporting. There is of course sadness and grief involved along with those other emotions which we all felt during that time, but the reader learns of how extraordinary the town and its citizens are. How they came together and care for the thousands of extra people and some few animals which unexpectedly arrived in their town. The town of Gander showed unstinting generosity and thoughtfulness to its new residence during a very difficult time. Here DeFede tells about if from the perspective of Werner Baldessarini, then chairman of Hugo Boss who had been traveling to NYC for Fashion Week: The bond with the passengers was rivaled only by his attachment to the townspeople, whose compassion was so overwhelming. They took their visitors on driving tours of the countryside. They took them to their homes. The passengers weren’t treated like refugees, but like long-lost relatives, and the more he thought about it, the more it moved Baldessarini. Coming from an environment as cutthroat as the fashion industry, Baldessarini realized this was not a feeling to ignore or casually dismiss. This was something to be relished. And given everything that was going wrong in the world, it was reassuring to see that right now, right here, in one small corner of the planet, something was going right. There was no hatred. No anger. No fear in Gander. I found this to be a really enjoyable read and encourage all interested to read it as well.

This was a great story following a devastating event. There were many story lines with the passengers on the plane and people in Gander, but the thread was beautifully intertwined - hospitality can help bring comfort in uncertain circumstances.

Well written and interesting. Loved it! Brought back memories. I had no idea most of this happened. Lovely book.

It took me a while to get around to reading this book, because, by the time it came out, I was over-saturated with 9/11 materials. But this is a very different type of story from those about Ground Zero. When the United States shut down its airspace and diverted all those planes elsewhere, 38 of them ended up in Gander, Newfoundland, a fishing town of about 10,000. The reason was simple: Gander, in spite of its small population today, has an enormous airport. During World War II, American military planes refueled at Gander before heading across the ocean to Europe. Until the invention of the jet engine, Gander was the "biggest gas station in the world," and many planes still stop there to refuel. Physically, Gander Airport could accommodate all those big planes landing, but what about the passengers? That's the real story of Gander -- how the people opened their hearts and homes to total strangers and mobilized every resource they had to comfort and care for the thousands of travelers who suddenly found themselves stranded. It was humanity's finest hour. This book abounds with human interest stories, such as: the fire engine racing to the next town with sirens blaring, to bring back toys for the "plane children"; the animal protection volunteers who crawled into the bellies of the grounded planes to rescue and care for the passengers' pets; the American family returning from Kazakhstan with a newly-adopted daughter; the big party for the four kids with birthdays that week... and many, many more. I was especially pleased to read about Rabbi Sudak, the Orthodox Jew (Lubovitcher Hasid, actually) stranded in Gander, who set up a small kosher kitchen and ministered to other stranded Jews, as well as curious locals and a "secret Jew" who lived in the area and "came out" to the rabbi. I was aware of this story because I had read about it in a Jewish newspaper but, in all the TV coverage of Gander, I never heard the rabbi mentioned once. In fact, there was a total lack of coverage of Jewish chaplains anywhere during the mainstream 9/11 coverage. This annoyed me to no end, because I KNEW that rabbis and lay Jewish workers were ministering during the 9/11 efforts, the same as their Christian counterparts. So it was very heartening to see this story included among the many tales of courage and caring. On the technical end, the book is well-written. The author, Jim Defede, is an excellent storyteller. In the course of writing the book, he interviewed over 180 people. From these, he chose a few representative stories to follow through the entire six days of the crisis. At the same time, he paints the bigger picture very well, so that we can see how the whole town of Gander -- as well as several other towns in the area -- were part of it. He also weaves in cultural and historical background about the area, such as the history of the airport mentioned above. (Which, by the way, answered my own questions about why all those planes were sent to a tiny town. I remember wondering about that at the time.) All in all, this is an excellent book -- one that I could not put down once I started reading.

We read this book for book club and will talk about it next month. It was a good reminder of what happened 25 years ago. And it was a nice story about the goodness in ppl, something that has been lost in our country for awhile.

i guess it is just me because there are so many five star reviews and i am only giving this 3 stars. and those 3 stars are mostly because the event it self was a 5 star event but written in a 1 star manner. i just could not engage in caring about any thing in the book because it seemed the author was trying to hard to create drama through his character developments. i am a very empathetic person, so i am disappointed in myself when i found myself thinking "meh" as different characters were introduced in the book. after awhile i grew weary of hearing how so and so had spent the day on 9/11 and what such and such was doing when the towers went down. horrific horrific events to be sure. but in THIS book, the subject was more about all these planes being diverted on a moment's notice. i was interested in the logistics of how so many people came together to make this happen and so perhaps being interrupted time and again about how a new passenger on the plane had a backstory that could make a grown man cry felt more like a cheap trick to add pages to the book and to heighten a drama that really didn't need more height to the very real drama of terrorism and diverted planes to a small town in newfoundland. this is a book i'll be donating and not keeping.

Glad to have heard about this book and couldn’t wait to read it. The stories were compelling. Friendships still ongoing to today.

This is the kind of book that will stay in your memory forever. Captivating and emotional account of passengers and crews grounded in charming Gander, Newfoundland. It reminded me of what G. K. Chesterton said about small communities: "The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men." Gander was the world for a week literally, but as a small community it remains the world with personal dramas of it own people. The author selected the right amount of stories and weaved everything with grace and compassion.

Puntuale e prodotto conforme alla descrizione. Libro bellissimo su una storia vera (11 settembre 2001)

Über die Vorgänge in Gander, Neufundland, hatte ich bereits kurz nach den Anschlägen einiges gelesen. Als Fluzeugenthusiast war mir nicht entgangen, dass die Lufthansa damals einen Airbus auf den Namen "Gander-Halifax" taufte, zu Ehren der beispiellosen Hilfsbereitschaft der Anwohner vor Ort. Mehr als zehn Jahre später stieß ich durch einen Blogeintrag auf das Buch von Jim DeFede und habe es gleich bestellt. Von der furchtbaren Covergestaltung des Paperbacks sollte man sich keineswegs abhalten lassen. Jim DeFede beschreibt ohne triefenden Patriotismus oder Pathos die Ereignisse, die sich über tausend Kilometer entfernt von den zusammenstürzenden Türmen in New York abspielten. Als der amerikanische Luftraum gesperrt wurde, mussten tausende Menschen ihre Reise zwangsweise unterbrechen, und 38 Flugzeuge strandeten in Gander. Was sich dort abspielte, berührt zutiefst. Wer hat nicht die Zuversicht und den Glauben an das Gute im Menschen verloren, angesichts der Flugzeuge, die mitsamt ihren Passagieren zu riesigen Projektilen wurden, um zu zerstören, zu verletzen, ein ganzes Land, ja, die ganze Welt auf bisher unvorstellbare Weise zu erschüttern? Dieses Buch ist dazu angetan, den Riss zu heilen, der wahrscheinlich in vielen Seelen entstanden ist. Vollkommen selbstlos und ohne zu zögern taten die Einwohner von Gander und den umliegende Städten alles, um den entsetzten Passagieren ihren erzwungenen Aufenthalt so angenehm wie möglich zu machen und ihnen alles zum Leben Notwendige zu geben. Sie teilten ihr Haus, ihren Besitz mit den Gestrandeten, sie verliehen ihre Autos an sie, sie zeigten ihnen die Gegend, sie wachten in der Nacht in den Aufnahmelagern, sie koordinierten unzählige Anrufe von besorgten Angehörigen, sie trösteten die Verzweifelten und gaben ein Fest für all die Kinder, die auf dem Weg nach Disneyworld waren, um dort ihren Geburtstag zu feiern. Sie krochen auf eigene Veranlassung in die Laderäume der Flugzeuge und versorgten auch die dort untergebrachten Tiere. Das Buch bewegt zutiefst, weil es ein Manifest für bedingungsloses Mitgefühl und Selbstlosigkeit ist, für ein freundschaftliches Miteinander unabhängig von Religion, Hautfarbe, Geschlecht oder sozialem Status. Mittelmäßige Englischkenntnisse reichen übrigens aus, der Autor verwendet eine schöne, unverschnörkelte Sprache, die leicht zu verstehen ist. Danke für diese Aufzeichnungen, Mr. DeFede.

The show was fantastic and highlighted in its intensity what the book describes. The book has a lot more stories than could be portrayed in the show. The book is worth a great read and provides a lot more detail than the show

As a 16-year-old Brazilian who didn't live through the difficult period described in Jim DeFede's book, I can say with all my heart that I didn't fully grasp the impact this tragedy had on the world. And yet, one book doesn't seem enough to describe the impact, nor how warm and hospitable the Newfoundlanders were. Like the title of this review, I say that this book, with its intertwining narrative and stories, is a call for greater humanity and respect for the victims of September 11th. Now, in 2025, we need a daily note that reminds us that there is hope in humanity, even if that note is a moving book from 22 years ago.