The celebration surrounding the 1972 Munich Olympics came to a bloody end when Palestinian terrorists took 11 Israeli athletes hostage, leading to disaster. Simon Reeve's illuminating One Day In September pieces together the timeline of events, attempting to definitively show how and why the horrible outcome—which also included the death of five terrorists and a German policeman—was not averted. With hundreds of interviews under his belt and hundreds more documents in hand (many recently released following petitions filed by families of the victims), Reeve had plenty of fuel for his investigation, and the resulting accounts of incompetence and vengeance are often fascinating. Germany had hopes that the massive display in Munich would finally put the memories of WWII and Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics behind it, but the country's ulterior motive ultimately facilitated the terrorist takeover. Wary of their international image, German officials dressed down the security guards and stripped them of their weapons, allowing members of the militant Black September group easy access to the Israeli compound. Even though the terrorists claimed that bloodshed was always intended as a last resort, a series of inexcusable decisions on the part of the Germans (including an arrogant refusal of aid from Israel's anti-terrorist squad) ensured that the conflict would not end well. Reeve goes to great lengths to present a balanced history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he reveals an extensive and irresponsible German cover-up. Later passages in One Day In September center on subsequent revenge missions by the Israeli special forces (some under the command of current Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak), proof that violence always begets violence, but the book's most moving accounts come from those family members, officials, athletes, and journalists who witnessed or experienced the horrible events firsthand. As much as the Germans may have hoped the day would fade from memory, Reeve's book shows that emotions still run strong, and that the sting of past mistakes still lingers.