` Nominally a history of the hot air balloon, ` Falling Upwards` is really a history of hope & fantasy
- & the quixotic characters who disobeyed that most fundamental laws of physics & gave humans flight` New Republic, Best Books of 2013 CHOSEN AS BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN ** Guardian ** New Statesman ** Daily Telegraph ** New Republic ** TIME Magazine 10 Top Nonfiction Books of 2013 ** The New Republic Best Books of 2013 ** Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)** From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to test the air, to brave generals floating over enemy lines to watch troop movements, this wonderful book offers a seamless fusion of history, art, science, biography & the metaphysics of flight. It is a masterly portrait of human endeavour, recklessness, vision & hope. In this heart-lifting book, Richard Holmes, author of the best-selling The Age of Wonder, follows the daring & enigmatic men & women who risked their lives to take to the air (or fall into the sky). Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, & how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet is a compelling adventure that only Holmes could tell. It is not a conventional history of ballooning. In a sense it is not really about balloons at all. It is about what balloons gave rise to. It is about the spirit of discovery itself & the extraordinary human drama it produces. From the dramatic & exhilarating early Anglo-French balloon rivalries, the crazy firework flights of the beautiful Sophie Blanchard, the long-distance voyages of the American entrepreneur John Wise & French photographer Felix Nadar to the balloons used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the Civil War (including a flight taken by George Armstrong Custer); the legendary tale of at least sixty-seven manned balloons that escaped from Paris (the first successful civilian airlift in history) during the Prussian siege of 1870-71; the high-altitude exploits of James Glaisher who rose seven miles above the earth without oxygen, helping to establish the new science of meteorology; & how Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, & Jules Verne felt the imaginative impact of flight & allowed it to soar in their work.