Mark Vanhoenacker Bücher

Es beginnt mit einer Verwandlung: Am Boden schwer und ungelenk, verlässt das Flugzeug nach einem Spurt die Erde und steigt federleicht in den Himmel. An den Passagieren ziehen glitzernde Metropolen und vereiste Gebirge vorüber. Wie ist es möglich, dass wir eine Reise durch die Luft unternehmen können? Von einem Kontinent zum anderen schweben? Mark Vanhoenacker arbeitete als Journalist, bevor er sich seinen Lebenstraum erfüllte. Heute steuert er Flugzeuge über den ganzen Globus, das Staunen hat er trotzdem nicht verlernt: über die Technik genauso wie über die Schönheit und die Verletzlichkeit der Erde unter ihm. Vielleicht ist das Fliegen nämlich doch ein Wunder, wenn man nur mit offenen Sinnen reist.

THE DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Illuminates the practical reality of piloting in a concise and useful manner' Times Literary Supplement Do something amazing and learn a new skill thanks to the Little Ways to Live a Big Life books! By the author of the acclaimed international bestseller Skyfaring, the Economist's 'Best book of the Year' and a New York Times 'Notable Book', and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week So, hello! Welcome! Honestly, you look surprisingly relaxed. That's great to see. Have a seat on the left side of the cockpit - that's the captain's seat. Yes, that's right, you're now the captain, and yes, that's the runway down there. Fasten your seatbelt, order yourself a cup of tea, and let's get cracking. Mark Vanhoenacker, the airline pilot who makes poetry out of the science of flight technology, hands over the controls. Walking and talking us through the nitty-gritty of an approach and touchdown, he builds our understanding of flight from the ground up (or rather from the sky down), offering a new perspective of one of the more challenging and rewarding tasks ever.

The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight--a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity--to the realm of the mundane. When most people today think of flying, they imagine tedious routines that involve security checkpoints, exorbitant baggage fees, shrinking legroom, and frustrating delays. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who gave up careers in academia and the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to re-imagine what we--both 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, the author vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries, above mountains, oceans, and deserts, through snow, wind, and rain, limning a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity which can afford us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.

"Growing up in his small hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spun the illuminated globe in his bedroom and dreamt of elsewhere, of distant, real cities, and a perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These places were sources of endless fascination and escape: streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in cities where Mark could be anyone, perhaps even himself. Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of our planet, touching down in the cities he imagined as a child. He experiences these metropolises in short layover visits that repeat month after month and year after year, giving him a unique perspective on the places that form our urban world. Interweaving travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and love through the lens of the hometown his heart has never left. Exploring the emblematic facets of each city's identity, the sweeping roads of Los Angeles, the old gates of Jeddah, the intricate, dream-inspired plan of Brasilia, he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home"--Publisher's description