The Turn (essay) (1993)PEOPLE who distrust the sensations of flight, who balk when an airplane banks and turns, are on to something big. I was reminded of this recently while riding in the back of a United Boeing 737 that was departing from San Francisco. Directly over the Golden Gate we rolled suddenly into a steep turn, dropping the left wing so far below the horizon that it appeared to pivot around the bridge's nearest tower. For a moment we exceeded the airline maximum of a thirty-degree bank, which is aerodynamically unimportant but is imposed for passengers' peace of mind. Sightseeing seemed more important now. Our pilots may have thought we would enjoy a dramatic view of the famous bridge and the city beyond. But as the airplane turned, startled passengers looked away from the windows. A collective gasp rippled through the cabin.Investigative journalist William Langewiesche passed this week. He was a widely regarded and decorated essayist with a particular speciality in disaster at sea and in the air, but also on land, as in the case of his series on the Twin Towers and his writings on the Iraq Occupation. Writing mainly in The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, he won numerous awards and became a Longform regular. You’ll find links below to many (most?) of his articles (though a bunch are paywalled). The excerpt above is from one that is freely available and, while it does not directly concern a specific calamity, it affords a nice sample of his writing and expresses his awe at the miracle of flight, combined with a healthy respect for its dangers. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: William Langewiesche -PUBLISHER PAGE: William Langewiesche (Macmillan) -PUBLISHER PAGE: William Langewiesche (Penguin Random House) -ENTRY: William Langewiesche (Good Reads) -FILMOGRAPHY: William Langewiesche(1955-2025) (IMDB) -ENTRY: Langewiesche, William 1955- (Encyclopedia.com) -ENTRY: William Langewiesche (BookBrowse) -ENTRY: William Langewiesche (New New Journalism) - - - -VIDEO ARCHIVES: William Langewiesche (YouTube) -VIDEO INDEX: William Langewiesche (C-SPAN Networks) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (NPR) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (Lapham’s Quaterly) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (The New Yorker) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (The Atlantic) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (LongForm) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (Vanity Fair) -INDEX: 15 Great Articles by William Langewiesche (The Electric Typewriter) -VIDEO INDEX: William Langewiesche (Charlie Rose, PBS) -INDEX: William Langewiesche (NY Times) -OBIT: William Langewiesche Dies at 70 (Michael Schaub, 6/16/25, Kirkus) -OBIT: William Langewiesche, the ‘Steve McQueen of Journalism,’ Dies at 70: He was a master of long form narratives, often involving high-stakes topics. He reported for Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine. (Trip Gabriel, 6/16/2025, NY Times) -OBIT: William Langewiesche Dies At 70: Magazine writer who used experience as a charter pilot in his stories had prostate cancer (Russ Niles, June 16, 2025, AV Club) -OBIT: Aviation Writer William Langewiesche Dies at 70: Langewiesche was a professional pilot who wrote for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine (Jessica Reed, June 17, 2025, AIOnline) -OBIT: William Langewiesche, Longtime VF Writer, Has Died at 70: A dear friend and fellow VF writer pays homage to a master of long-form journalism. (Michael Joseph Gross, 6/17/25, Vanity Fair) -TRIBUTE: The Master of the White-Knuckle Narrative: Remembering William Langewiesche, who died this week at age 70 (Cullen Murphy, 6/17/25, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?: Malfunctions caused two deadly crashes. But an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty. (William Langewiesche, 9/18/19, NY Times Magazine) -ESSAY: The Distant Executioner: During World War II, snipers were seen as a spooky, merciless “Murder Inc.” by other soldiers—the brutal intimacy of their kills made them a breed apart. But in Afghanistan, where avoiding civilian deaths is a top priority, U.S. military sharpshooters may have found the war that needs them most. Going inside the world of Texas Army National Guardsman “Russ Crane,” who has dropped a Taliban fighter at 806 meters, the author discovers the sniper’s special talents and torments, and why it helps, in Crane’s view, to have God on your side. (William Langewiesche, January 6, 2010, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: “The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades: A recording salvaged from three miles deep tells the story of the doomed “El Faro,” a cargo ship engulfed by a hurricane. (William Langewiesche, April 4, 2018, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Meet the Two Men Who Free-Climbed Yosemite’s Perilous Dawn Wall: Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson completed one of the most dangerous climbs in history—with anchors and ropes as their only security system. (William Langewiesche, March 16, 2015, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: The Human Factor: Airline pilots were once the heroes of the skies. Today, in the quest for safety, airplanes are meant to largely fly themselves. Which is why the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed 228 people, remains so perplexing and significant. William Langewiesche explores how a series of small errors turned a state-of-the-art cockpit into a death trap. (William Langewiesche, September 17, 2014, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Riding the Mali Express to Dakar (William Langewiesche, 11/25/1990, NY Times) -ESSAY: The World in Its Extreme: A 17,000-word exploration of the Sahara Desert, the hottest place on Earth. (William Langewiesche, Nov 1991, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: A Sea Story: The Estonia was carrying 989 passengers when it sank in 30-foot seas on its way across the Baltic in September 1994. More than 850 lost their lives. The ones who survived acted quickly and remained calm. (William Langewiesche, May 2004, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane: Five years ago, the flight vanished into the Indian Ocean. Officials on land know more about why than they dare to say. (William Langewiesche, Jun 2019, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad: The new American Embassy in Baghdad will be the largest, least welcoming, and most lavish embassy in the world: a $600 million massively fortified compound with 619 blast-resistant apartments and a food court fit for a shopping mall. Unfortunately, like other similarly constructed U.S. Embassies, it may already be obsolete. (William Langewiesche, October 29, 2007, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: The Devil at 37,000 Feet: There were so many opportunities for the accident not to happen—the collision between a Legacy 600 private jet and a Boeing 737 carrying 154 people. But on September 29, 2006, high above the Amazon, a long, thin thread of acts and omissions brought the two airplanes together. From the vantage point of the pilots, the Brazilian air-traffic controllers, and the Caiapó Indians, whose rain forest became a charnel house, the author reconstructs a fatal intersection between high-performance technology and human fallibility. (William Langewiesche, December 5, 2008, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Anatomy of a Miracle: Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River last January, was justly celebrated for his skill and courage. Less has been revealed about other players in the drama: those enigmatic geese, the engines they struck, a pioneering French engineer, and an unsung hero—the Airbus A320 itself. (William Langewiesche, May 5, 2009, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Eden: A Gated Community: The plot contains elements of Lost Horizon and Heart of Darkness, Fitzcarraldo and The Tempest. After making a fortune as founder of North Face and Esprit, Douglas Tompkins embraced the principles of deep ecology. Then, forsaking civilization, he bought a Yosemite-sized piece of wilderness in Chile, where only he and a like-minded few would live. They intended to show the world how an eco-community could flourish even as the ancient forest was kept pristine. Tompkins ran into one big problem: other people (William Langewiesche, June 1999, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Lessons of ValuJet 592: As a reconstruction of this terrible crash suggests, in complex systems some accidents may be "normal"—and trying to prevent them all could even make operations more dangerous (William Langewiesche, March 1998, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Invisible Men (William Langewiesche, February 15, 1998, The New Yorker) -ESSAY: Slam and Jam: For all the reports of equipment failures and "close calls" and controller burnout, the nation's air-traffic-control system is in fact far less precarious, in terms of safety, than people imagine it to be. The real threat to the system's integrity has as yet received little attention (William Langewiesche, October 1997, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Turabi’s Law: It has been argued that Islamic radicalism may at least bring a form of peace to some of the world's most troubled nations. But the Islamic regime in Sudan has created a nightmare -- one that may portend the real future of the Islamic world (William Langewiesche, August 1994, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Turn: At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked turn, a procedure that by now seems so routine and familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up into the subject (William Langewiesche, December 1993, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center: After nine months of unrivaled access to the disaster site, our correspondent tells the inside story of the recovery effort. This is the first installment in a three-part series (William Langewiesche, July/August 2002, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Anarchy at Sea: The sea is a domain increasingly beyond government control, vast and wild, where laws of nations mean little and secretive shipowners do as they please—and where the resilient pathogens of piracy and terrorism flourish (William Langewiesche, September 2003, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Columbia's Last Flight: The inside story of the investigation—and the catastrophe it laid bare (William Langewiesche, November 2003, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: A Two-Planet Species?: The right way to think about our space program (William Langewiesche, Jan/Feb 2004, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Welcome to the Green Zone: The American bubble in Baghdad (William Langewiesche, November 2004, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Letter From Baghdad: Life in the wilds of a city without trust (William Langewiesche, Jan/Feb 2005, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Accuser: One woman has spent decades documenting crimes against humanity in Iraq. Now Saddam and his circle are facing justice (William Langewiesche, March 2005, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Hotel Baghdad: Fear and lodging in Iraq (William Langewiesche, May 2005, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Ziad for the Defense: When Saddam Hussein goes on trial, he will not lack for legal defenders. Heading his team at the moment is a man named Ziad al-Khasawneh (William Langewiesche, June 2005, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Wrath of Khan: How A. Q. Khan made Pakistan a nuclear power—and showed that the spread of atomic weapons can't be stopped (William Langewiesche, November 2005, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Point of No Return: First Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan showed that any country could have made a nuclear bomb. Then he showed—not once but three times—why the nuclear trade will never be shut down (William Langewiesche, Jan/Feb 2005, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb: It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible. A reporter travels the world to find the weaknesses a terrorist could exploit (William Langewiesche, December 2006, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS: The tale of a bombing raid in the Libyan desert, pitting stealth bombers and 500-pound bombs against 70 ragtag fighters (William Langewiesche, July/Aug 2018, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Border: The management of our relations with Mexico now looms as one of the most pressing foreign-policy challenges facing the United States. The problems confronting the two countries are great, and nowhere are they as starkly apparent as they are along the U.S.Mexican border a region that is by turns desolate and congested, despoiled and pristine, arid and lush, dirt poor and thriving, lawless and a police state. Our correspondent has filed two reports. The first, appearing this month,focuses on immigration, drugs, and law enforcement. The second, appearing next month, will focus on economic and environmental issues (William Langewiesche, May 1992, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Vacations in the Sahara: Trackless Sands, Trusty Camels, and a Trove of Prehistoric Art (William Langewiesche, November 1993, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Million-Dollar Nose: With his stubborn disregard for the hierarchy of wines, Robert Parker, the straight-talking American wine critic, is revolutionizing the industry -- and teaching the French wine establishment some lessons it would rather not learn. (William Langewiesche, December 2000, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Profits of Doom: One of the most polluted cities in America learns to capitalize on its contamination (William Langewiesche, April 2001, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Peace is Hell: Every six months the Pentagon sends nearly 4,000 soldiers to Bosnia and brings nearly 4,000 soldiers home. To see how it's done is to understand why keeping peace has become harder than waging war—and why the Pax Americana has stretched the mighty American military to the limit (William Langewiesche, October 2001, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Storm Island: If you like extreme weather, the French island of Ouessant is a good place to find it (William Langewiesche, December 2001, The Atlantic) -EXCERPT: from 'The Atomic Bazaar': Chapter One (William Langewiesche, 5/15/2007, NPR) -EXCERPT: from 'Fly By Wire': The Inquest (William Langewiesche, 11/12/2009, NPR) -ESSAY: House of War: After Ramush Haradinaj led Kosovo’s bloody fight for independence from Serbia, becoming provisional prime minister, he was tried for war crimes by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. In a clash of 21st-century justice and 15th-century laws, Haradinaj came out the winner. (William Langewiesche, November 12, 2008, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: The Pirate Latitudes: When the French luxury cruise ship Le Ponant was captured by a raggedy, hopped-up band of Somali pirates last spring, in the Gulf of Aden, it looked as if the bandits had bitten off more than they could chew. But after a week-long standoff, they got what they had come for—a $2.15 million ransom. Describing the terrifying attack, the ordeal of the ship’s epicurean crew, and the tense negotiations, the author examines the ruthless calculus behind a new age of piracy. (William Langewiesche, March 6, 2009, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Wave-Maker: When Ken Bradshaw caught the largest wave ever surfed, in 1998, he was riding on pure, single-minded passion. But that same quality—plus a deep antipathy to hype—has put him at odds with the increasingly crowded, commercialized world of big-wave surfing. On Oahu’s famed North Shore, the author learns about the 58-year-old maverick’s record-breaking encounter with 85 feet of “Condition Black” water, the battles he still fights, and his unlikely friendship with the publicity-loving Mark Foo, who was killed on a wave he “stole” from Bradshaw. (William Langewiesche, January 27, 2011, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Expendables: It’s the dark romance of the French Foreign Legion: haunted men from everywhere, fighting anywhere, dying for causes not their own. Legionnaires need war, certainly, and Afghanistan is winding down. But there’s always the hopeless battle against rogue gold miners in French Guiana . . . (William Langewiesche, November 12, 2012, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Man Who Pierced the Sky: When Felix Baumgartner set out to make a living by stunt jumping—from cliffs, buildings, and bridges—the young Austrian had no idea where it would take him: to a pressurized capsule nearly 24 miles above New Mexico, last October 14, preparing to free-fall farther than any man in history, and at supersonic speed. Detailing Baumgartner’s quest, William Langewiesche explores what drove him to ever greater heights. (William Langewiesche, April 9, 2013, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: What Lies Beneath: Deep below the streets of New York City lie its vital organs—a water system, subways, railroads, tunnels, sewers, drains, and power and cable lines—in a vast, three-dimensional tangle. Penetrating this centuries-old underworld of caverns, squatters, and unmarked doors, William Langewiesche follows three men who constantly navigate its dangers: the subway-operations chief who dealt with the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the engineer in charge of three underground mega-projects, and the guy who, well, just loves exploring the dark, jerry-rigged heart of a great metropolis. (William Langewiesche, October 25, 2013, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Chaos Company: Wherever governments can’t—or won’t—maintain order, from oil fields in Africa to airports in Britain and nuclear facilities in America, the London-based “global security” behemoth G4S has been filling the void. It is the world’s third-largest private-sector employer and commands a force three times the size of the British military. On-site in South Sudan with G4S ordnance-disposal teams, William Langewiesche learns just how dirty the job can get, and how perilous the company’s control. (William Langewiesche, March 18, 2014, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Salvage Beast: With roughly 100,000 large merchant ships in the water at any time, scores sink, burn, break apart, run aground, or explode each year—often with toxic consequences. It is Captain Nick Sloane's job to board troubled vessels and salvage what he can. Against heavy odds, he recently refloated the doomed cruise ship Costa Concordia. William Langewiesche explains why Sloane may be the most valuable man on the seas (William Langewiesche, November 12, 2014, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: City of Fear: Operating by cell phone, a highly organized prison gang launched an attack that shut down Brazil’s largest city last May, with the authorities powerless to stop it. For many in São Paulo, this vast, amorphous criminal network is the only government they have. (William Langewiesche, March 20, 2008, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Welcome to the Dark Net, a Wilderness Where Invisible World Wars Are Fought and Hackers Roam Free: Through the eyes of a master hacker turned security expert, William Langewiesche chronicles the rise of the Dark Net—where weapons, drugs, and information are bought, sold, and hacked—and learns how high the stakes have really become. (William Langewiesche, September 11, 2016, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Jungle Law: In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco’s wells in the area around Lago Agrio (“sour lake”), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in an epic lawsuit&—among the largest environmental suits in history—against Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author investigates how many hundreds of square miles of surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump. (William Langewiesche, April 3, 2007, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: “Leave No Soldier Behind”: The Unsolved Mystery of the Soldier Who Died in the Watchtower: Is the Army botching its investigations into noncombatant deaths? (William Langewiesche, January 8, 2019, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: The Camorra Never Sleeps: For years before they caught him, the Italian police had no idea that Paolo Di Lauro was one of Naples’s most powerful crime bosses, running a drug and counterfeit-goods empire—and responsible for a peace his turf had rarely known. Now authorities may long for the days when he was in charge. (William Langewiesche, April 10, 2012, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Towers of Strength (William Langewiesche, 12/27/2009, NY Times) -ESSAY: The Reporter Who Told the World About the Bomb (William Langewiesche, 8/04/2020, NY Times) -ESSAY: The War for the Rainforest (William Langewiesche, March 16, 2022, NY Times Magazine) -ESSAY: The Secret Pentagon War Game That ?Offers a Stark? Warning for Our Times (William Langewiesche, 12/02/24, The New York Times Magazine) -ESSAY: William Langewiesche Responds To Glenn Garvin (William Langewiesche, September 5, 2014, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: The 10-Minute Mecca Stampede That Made History (William Langewiesche, February 2018, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Can a French Friar End the 21st-Century Slave Trade? (William Langewiesche, January 2016, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: How One U.S. Soldier Blew the Whistle on a Cold-Blooded War Crime (William Langewiesche, July 2015, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Everything You Need to Know About Flying Virgin Galactic (William Langewiesche, April 2015, Vanity Fair) -REVIEW: of IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE The FBI Investigation of TWA Flight 800. By Pat Milton (William Langewiesche, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD By Henry Louis Gates Jr. (William Langewiesche, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of THE FUTURE OF THE PAST By Alexander Stille (William Langewiesche, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of DOWN BY THE RIVER: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family by Charles Bowden (William Langewiesche, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of LAST MAN OUT: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster by y Melissa Fay Greene (William Langewiesche, NY Times Book Review) -EXCERPT: The last voyage of the Estonia (William Langewiesche, 26 September 2005, Open Democracy) - - -AUDIO: Writer and Aviator William Langewiesche (Terry Gross, May 27, 2004, Fresh Air) -INTERVIEW: Disaster Man: A conversation with William Langewiesche. (Interview by Wendy Murray, March/April 2007, Books & Culture) -INTERVIEW: William Langewiesche: The author talks about "Rules of Engagement," his November 2006 V.F. article about the Haditha killings. (Keenan Mayo, March 26, 2007, Vanity Fair) - - - - - - - - - -PROFILE: Langewiesche Unveiled: Despite many indications to the contrary, magazine writer William Langewiesche says right now is the golden age of nonfiction (SF Gate Magazine) - -ESSAY: The limits of William Langewiesche’s ‘airmanship’ (Elan Head, Sep 23, 2019, Medium) -ESSAY: When journalism is too good to be true (Glenn Garvin, September 12, 2014, Miami Herald) -ESSAY: The William Langewiesche aviation reader (Marcin Wichary, Dec 28, 2015, Medium) -ESSAY: miracle on the hudson: Sully and Langewiesche in Nerdy Pilot Argument (Adam K. Raymond, November 2009, New York) - - - - - -REVIEW INDEX: William Langewiesche (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche (Paul McLeary, January Magazine) -REVIEW: of American Ground (Will Hammond, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of American Ground (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of American Ground (Martin Lund) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of THE ATOMIC BAZAAR: THE RISE OF NUCLEAR POWER by William Langewiesche (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: William Langewiesche and “Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight”: The prize-winning magazine writer's first book is a blueprint for the world as he sees it, exploring themes to come in the next 20 years (Jonathan Clarke, Nieman Story Board) -REVIEW: of INSIDE THE SKY (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime by William Langewiesche (Stephanie Showalter, The National Sea Grant Law Center) -REVIEW: of Outlaw Sea (Venkatesh Rao, Ribbon Farm) -REVIEW: of Outlaw Sea (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of Outlaw Sea (Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of Outlaw Sea (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the 'Miracle' on the Hudson by William Langewiesche (Jonathan Glancey, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of Fly by Wire (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of SAHARA UNVEILED: A JOURNEY ACROSS THE DESERT by William Langewiesche (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of Sahara Unveiled (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of Sahara Unveiled (Bryanna Plogg) -REVIEW: of CUTTING FOR SIGN by William Langewiesche (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of Cutting for Sign (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of Book-related and General Links: |
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