Skyfaring - Mark Vanhoenacker

One of the Best Books of the Year
The New York Times San Francisco Chronicle
The Economist Kirkus Reviews

In the twenty-first century, airplane flight- once a remarkable feat of human ingenuity-has been relegated to the realm of the mundane. In this mesmerizing reflection on flying, Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flying, helps us to reimagine what we-as pilots and as passengers-are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity and reawakening our capacity to be amazed.