Snowblind or The Boy Who Fell out of the Sky

Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade

Author: Robert Sabbag

Now available from Grove Press, Snowblind, Robert Sabbag's all-out, non-stop, and now-classic look at the cocaine trade, follows the brief, Roman-candle career of American smuggler Zachary Swan and the intricate scams he rode to glory in the 1970s. From Colombia to New York, Swan brought better living through chemistry to those who were buying, inventing dazzling deceptions to stay one step ahead of the narcs. In the process he discovered a hip, dangerous, high-velocity world that Sabbag evokes with extraordinary power and humor.

New Yorker

A triumphant piece of reporting.

National Review

A classic.

LA Times

A witty, intelligent, fiercely stylish, drug-induced exemplary tale.

Rolling Stone

An extremely rare cut of dry wit, poetry, rock-hard fact and relentless insight.

What People Are Saying

Hunter S. Thompson
A flat-out ballbuster. It moves like a threshing machine with a fuel tank full of ether....Sabbag is a whip-song writer.

Norman Mailer
One of the first books about the cocaine trade and it is still among the best.

Susan Brownmiller
The ultimate slide down the precipice of hip.

Robert Stone
One of the best books about drugs ever written.

Nora Ephron
One of the most dazzling and spectacular pieces of reporting I have ever read.

See also: Financial Modelling with Jump Processes or Wireless Communications and Networking

The Boy Who Fell out of the Sky: A True Story

Author: Ken Dornstein

David Dornstein was twenty-five years old, with dreams of becoming a great writer, when he boarded Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, a terrorist bomb ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland. Almost a decade later, Ken Dornstein set out to solve the riddle of his older brother’s life, using the notebooks and manuscripts that David left behind. In the process, he also began to create a new life of his own. The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is the unforgettable story of one man’s search for the truth about his brother--and himself.

The New York Times - William Grimes

The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is a mesmerizing tale of family crisis, mental illness and unfulfilled promise.

The Washington Post - Marian Fontana

Most memoirs chronicling loss deal with its immediate aftermath, the searing pain of raw and unexpected grief, but in Ken Dornstein's haunting new memoir, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky, the author tries to understand the loss of his only brother -- killed in the terrorist airplane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. Not just a tribute to the brief and complicated life of David Dornstein, the book is a kind of catharsis for the author, whose own identity was all but destroyed on that day.

Publishers Weekly

On December 21, 1988, Dornstein's older brother, David, went down with Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Shattered, Dornstein returned to college and tried to move on. But eight years later, he started reading the papers left behind by his brother, who was an unpublished but prolific writer. He decided to travel to Lockerbie, believing "I could still save David's life if I went right away." This memoir cobbles together the author's memories, past news accounts and David's passionate journal entries and letters. It is this comprehensive blending, as well as Frontline series editor Dornstein's clear and eloquent writing about understanding the mystery of who his brother really was-he uncovers that David had been molested as a child-that keeps this from being a sappy, self-indulgent account. Dornstein employs some clever literary devices, such as a list of things to do in Lockerbie, which includes a walk to Tundergarth, one of the wreckage sites, with "hills so lush, soft, and rolling green you will want to drop onto them yourself." Seventeen years after the bombing, Dornstein is married (to his brother's first love, incidentally), a father and at peace with the loss. (Mar. 7) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Yes, Dornstein's book is a memoir. It's about reckoning with the loss of his older brother David, who, at age 25, was on Pan Am Flight 103, bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Yet it avoids all the stereotypes of the genre: no self-pity, no prose that veers either into grandiloquence or single-word sentences, no tidy pronouncements about a messed-up life. Dornstein (PBS series editor, Fronline; Accidentally, On Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America) gives us the tale of his journey to learn more about a brother whom he thought he'd have a full lifetime to encounter. His book shows how, in seeking to make that encounter endure in spite of David's death, he newly encounters himself. In deceptively straightforward prose, he weaves a subtle story, filled with self-deprecating humor and replete with wisdom. His book is loving, honest, and moving precisely because there is never a heavy hand at play. In fact, Dornstein's approach is the perfect counterpoint to the declamatory style of his brother's life. David had been avid, beyond all else, to be a published writer, and Ken quotes liberally from the many notebooks he left behind. David's death denied fulfillment of his ambition, but through Ken's book, the loss is not complete. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/05.]-Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Dornstein's memoir is characterized by a surpassing drive to express truths as he investigates the emotional landscape of loss following the death of his older brother. In December 1988, David, 25, was flying home on Pan Am Flight 103. A terrorist's bomb detonated onboard, killing all 259 passengers and the crew. The author, then a college sophomore, shares how he initially deflected the monstrous pain of his loss through denial, gradually working toward acceptance of the tragedy in all its attendant sorrows, and ultimately requiring nearly 17 years' reflection before he felt ready to compose this story. David is depicted as a vibrant, impassioned, artistic soul, an aspiring writer who left behind voluminous notebooks, correspondence, and intense ruminations permeated with tones of despair over whether he would fail to achieve his literary destiny. The author feels an obligation to assume responsibility for David's body of work, to organize and somehow wrest from it a timeless "essence" of his brother, to validate his truncated life by bringing the unfinished oeuvre to fruition. The healing process for Dornstein, as he alternately approaches and retreats from this self-assigned task, is laid out with dogged thoroughness. His journey in moving beyond an intractable knot of bereavement is depicted with blunt yet graceful sensitivity. Black-and-white photos are included. This is an ambitious read for teens, but rewarding because of its courage and authenticity.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The disturbing story of a passenger on the doomed Pan Am Flight 103, written by the victim's younger brother, an editor for PBS's Frontline. Dornstein was only 19 when his 25-year-old brother David was killed in the terrorist attack over Lockerbie, Scotland. In this grim, often depressing account, the author digs deeply into his erratic brother's past, seeking not only to recreate his brother's final days, but to burrow into his mind and soul. David Dornstein was a would-be writer whose craving for fame and success far outstripped his talent, and his life had been spiraling downward even before his graduation from Brown in 1984. Although he filled notebook after notebook with his meandering, autobiographical prose, David was far better at imagining himself a successful author than in focusing on the task of becoming one. His personal life was equally troubled. Though handsome and likable, he bounced from one squalid apartment, menial job and failed relationship to the next, while his college friends moved on. When David boarded the Pan Am flight, he was on his way home from Israel, fleeing a promising relationship with an attractive woman. There's a strange, almost creepy element to Dornstein's near-obsessive pursuit of his dead brother's ghost: The author initiates a close friendship with David's former Israeli girlfriend, then later befriends-and eventually marries-his brother's college sweetheart. Dornstein's search also uncovers a childhood secret that helps to partially explain his brother's self-destructive behavior. There are powerful, chilling moments in this story: Dornstein's visit to Lockerbie, where he treads the very ground on which his brother's body fell to Earth, and hisfinal goodbye to the rebuilt skeleton of the 747 in a remote hangar in England. Elsewhere, the narrative stalls, as the author gets buried under the rambling, unfocused writings that grew in unfinished piles in his brother's rooms. Eerily, David had often imagined himself dying young in a plane crash-he presumed it his quickest ticket to fame. Given the downward spiral of David's brief life, we're forced to ponder whether the Libyan terrorists eventually charged with the bombing didn't spare him an even sadder end. It's the most disturbing part of this penetrating but uneven story.

Table of Contents:

	Last Things	1
	Private Investigations	47
	Dreams	115
	Fictions	207
	The End	261
	Acknowledgments	293
	Notes	295