My original Scapegoat audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

I just flew from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Dublin and hearing an airline story immediately piqued my interest. I think it’s important to NOT Google what happened to fully enjoy the book as the author is considerate enough to give detailed stories within the major body. Like a good action movie, something big happens by the 18-minute mark. At first, the writing is crisp and tight, the author writes enough so the reader can get invested, but not too much time to get lost in minutia. While the setting is an airplane, what the book really provides is a “you decide” book that is detailed enough for someone to take notes is if they so chose. You will hear the story of the incident in carefully outlined detail, then many different points of view, but ultimately that of the defense of the pilot Captain “Hoot” Gibson.

What makes the story compelling is that in 1979, there was no Google or the social media platforms and videos that might have added evidence one way or the other. The book mentions this connection, but think about research through real newspapers, microfilm, and finding people. As a member of Generation X living in the Washington DC suburbs, my first plane tragedy memory came from Air Florida Flight 90, a plane that hit the 14th Street Bridge in bad weather. This flight, however, was not an icy mess from takeoff, rather, an opportunity for a pilot to and crew to be at their finest. As we look to a future with self-driving cars, one wonders if a computer could have done what this pilot did.

Dialogue is an important part of most audiobooks. For this book to succeed, we need different voices. There are some tower-to-airport, airport-to-tower dialogues that give it a cinematic feel, but overall it is a straightforward narrative. How does the book treat its primary and secondary audience? The primary audience, the aviation industry might be very happy with the level of detail and that even those experts may learn something. The secondary audience, the general public will find that there’s explication to help them get through some parts, but like in a jury trial, detailed diagrams, images, and video would make the concepts more concrete. There is a universal component, however, that all readers can tie to, and that is the feeling of being in the minority and the microaggressions that can go along with that.

Where I feel the book succeeds is creating this feeling of emptiness for “Hoot,” the pilot. He feels he excelled under adversity and instead gets ostracized. In the classic “show, don’t tell” fashion we feel for him as stewardesses refuse to fly with him, a training evaluator makes his life more difficult, as do some of the investigators. He loses his circle of friends when things go sour. It’s a story of a hero who becomes an outcast. Much of the book is a defense of Hoot, the pilot, but it makes a tremendous social statement and provides a lesson in empathy. It pits large faceless entitles against a small group, even a single man.

The majority of the book contrasts the strong first few hours. Around two-and-a-half hours, the book goes back to Hoot’s childhood, how he got into flying, and so on. While most audiobook listeners shun an abridged volume, I believe a tighter version, that kept the tension going would have succeeded better than this eleven hour offering. It’s a good detailed and well researched book, but we go from sympathetic and engaged juror, to someone who is watching the clock with inordinate amounts of time used to prove and defend the pilot. For example, the author dedicates almost half-an-hour to the timing of picking up meal trays. While this time stamp is important for a jury trial and to set the record straight, the story loses its steam proving and beating a dead horse with detail than focusing on the central theme, an innocent crew ends up being the victim of groupthink and bias stemming from perceived guilt, largely a function of an erased flight tape.

Is it worth a read? Yes, I think so, but in the end I would retract my statement to not Google, rather, I would Google the images that could help me understand flaps, aircraft schematics and maneuvers.

Narrator Review

The narrator, Fred Filbrich, provides a well-read account. I didn’t notice the narrator as his voice was a warm background until the book switched from primary narrator to tower to flight and flight to tower dialogue. It’s an easy listen and I found myself moving through hours of the book without noticing time going by. Except for conversations between the cockpit and the tower, the book mostly lacks dialogue that would have made the narrator’s job a bit easier. Overall, however, the narrator made a highly technical volume pleasurable.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author. ( )

This is a clear case of negligence. After 3 years of interviews and research, the author tells the true story of Flight TWA 841 which almost had a near fatal crash on April 4, 1979. After reading the pilots' details of the event, the interviews of the pilots by FAA agents and others, the false allegations picked up by the media, and the investigation into the near crash, the biased investigators and review board found fault with the pilots.

See my complete review at The Eclectic Review ( )

Ok first off, this type of book is right up my alley. As many know I am an avid fan of aviation. I enjoy reading stories of aircraft. I am not familiar with the incident of the Boeing 727 and April 4, 1979. Although, this did event did transpire before I was born. What I did like about this book was that while I know about flying as I have taken flying lessons, I was not familiar with TSA or all of the red tape that Captain Hoot and his flight crew had to endure after the incident. It is amazing that anyone really stayed as calm as they did with all of the lies and numerous interviews.

Mr. Corsetti really did do his research. It showed within the pages of this book with all of the details. I do agree with another reader that I wavered on this book as on one hand I really liked it but at times it did seem to repeat itself and grow a little cumbersome. Yet my intrigue about finding out the truth and reading a book that is on one of my favorite topics won out and I could endure the repetitiveness. ( )

SCAPEGOAT by Emilio Corsetti III starts the book by recounting the incident of TWA flight 841 in 1979 of the passenger plane that almost crashes from a uncontrollable dive but the captain, "Hoot" Gibson, and his flight crew manage to regain control and narrowly avoid utter catastrophe. After the incident, so many theories, findings, queries, mistakes and lawsuits were filed and SCAPEGOAT consolidates that mountain of information into a study of what went right and what went wrong in the post-incident analysis of TWA flight 841.
Being 40, I'm too young to remember this happening or the aftermath of it, but I wish I was, it's such a fascinating event to look at. The author really studies all of the people involved, from who they are personally to their professional education and backgroundl. It's quite clear that the author disagrees with a vast majority of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) findings, but still does an admirable job of looking at each part of the incident analysis from several angles. The book also challenges us as the reader to consider that investigations like this one can be skewed by a single misrepresentation and that misrepresentation, even after realized and reconsidered, can forever haunt and alter the perceived reality of what happened. I should make note that the author does a good job of explaining the technical analysis of the plane in question and the protocols and maneuvers used, but I also think that having a father who worked for 30 years as a system analyst for a major airline helped me understand certain things in the book I might have struggled with otherwise.
I think most anyone would enjoy SCAPEGOAT, but especially those interested in commercial airline history and anyone aware of the TWA 841 incident and wants to learn more about it. One of the ways I think a nonfiction book is good or not is whether I want to read more about the subject matter or not and for what it's worth, I have been struck with the desire to look something book related a couple times a day since I started reading SCAPEGOAT.
Thank you to Odyssey Publishing, Emilio Corsetti III, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ( )