**Sunday Times Bestseller****Book of the Week on Radio 4**'A beautiful book about a part of the modern world which remains genuinely magical’ Mark Haddon'One of the most constantly fascinating, but consistently under-appreciated aspects of modern life is the business of flying. Mark Vanhoenacker has written the ideal book on the subject: a description of what it’s like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist and a deeply sensi...

Soms is het genoeg dat iemand je laat zien dat het kan.Als je altijd al op de stoel van een piloot hebt willen zitten, is Hoe land je een vliegtuig? dé manier om in de cockpit te kruipen. Marc Vanhoenacker, de vliegenier-dichter die poëzie weet te maken van de wetenschap achter vliegen, geeft jou de stuurknuppel in handen.Hij loodst je al pratend door het naderen en landen heen en bouwt zo je kennis over vliegen van de grond ad (of beter gezegd, vanuit de lucht) ...

Take a seat—the captain's seat, that is—and relax. You're about to land a Boeing 747. "Brilliant." — The Sunday TimesA Daily Mail and Spectator Best Book of the YearA Points Guy Best Book of the YearThe mystery of flight is magical; the reality even more so—from the physics that keeps a 450-ton vehicle aloft, to the symphony of technology and teamwork that safely sets it down again. T...

This love letter to the cities of the world—from the airline pilot–author of Skyfaring—is "a journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energized, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives" (Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel).In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere— of the distant, real cities he found on the illu...

This love letter to the cities of the world—from the airline pilot–author of Skyfaring—is "a journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energized, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives" (Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel).In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere— of the distant, real cities he found on the illu...

In this 2022 interview with Justine Willis Toms, long-haul commercial pilot Mark Vanhoenacker opens our vision to a more expansive landscape. He is a seasoned pilot and a brilliant lyrical writer about his journeys as experienced both from the air and on the ground where he chronicles for us some of the planet’s great cities. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and a columnist for the Financial Times.He says, “I get to so see so much of the ...

In Skyfaring, airline pilot and flight romantic Mark Vanhoenacker shares his irrepressible love of flying, on a journey from day to night, from new ways of mapmaking and the poetry of physics to the names of winds and the nature of clouds. Here, anew, is the simple wonder and transcendent joy of motion, and the remarkable new perspectives that height and distance bestow on everything we love.

Ambitious and groundbreaking, Electric Shock tells the story of popular music, from the birth of recording in the 1890s to the digital age, from the first pop superstars of the twentieth century to the omnipresence of music in our lives, in hit singles, ringtones and on Spotify.Over that time, popular music has transformed the world in which we live. Its rhythms have influenced how we walk down the street, how we face ourselves in the mirror, and how we handle the outside ...

As with the Air France Flight 447 tragedy, much of the time air crashes are a confluence of events; a cascade of bad luck, bad decisions, inappropriate airline company policy, the failure of aviation regulators, and sometimes insufficient training, or various combinations of all five.But why?Seconds to Disaster will demonstrate that part of that bad luck is often aided by the airline industry's own endless and aggressive pursuit of bottom-line profit. It contributes to a cre...

Jerry White's London in the Eighteenth Century is an unrivalled, panoramic account of the city's dramatic century of rebirth by its leading expert.London in the eighteenth century had risen from the ashes. The city and its people had been brought to the brink by the Great Fire of 1666. But the century that followed was a period of vigorous expansion, of scientific and artistic genius, of blossoming reason, civility, elegance and manners. It was also an age...

Air travel is an almost essential part of everyday life. A significant proportion of travelers are curious about what is actually happening on the flight deck. This book, based on forty years of personal experiences, takes the reader into the cockpit.Written in a humorous style, it relates incidents, accidents and some romantic attachments. The narrative includes the transport of a complete circus, a period spent flying for an African mining company, a brush with Nigerian authoriti...

With a foreword by Paul McCartney'It's semi-devotional -- a really special place' Florence Welch'There are certain things that are mythical. Abbey Road is mythical' Nile RodgersMany people will recognise the famous zebra crossing. Some visitors may have graffitied their name on its hallowed outer walls. Others might even have managed to penetrate the iron gates. But what draws in these thousands of fans here, year af...