Description

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In a good year aerobatics is one of the most beautiful sports imaginable. Pilots pull through impossibly elegant figures at hundreds of miles an hour. In a bad year no sport kills more of its participants. To fly really well and to win you must depart the land of the possible and enter a place of pure faith. In this stunning literary debut, Joshua Cooper Ramo has crafted a meditation on the seduction of flight and a passionate love letter to a life of risk.

About the Author

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Joshua Cooper Ramo was raised in Los Ranchos, New Mexico, on the Rio Grande River. He began flying in his late teens and holds two national point-to-point airspeed records. He joined Time in 1996 as the youngest senior editor in the magazine's history and went on to become its foreign editor and assistant managing editor. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders of Tomorrow, as well as a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a cofounder of the U.S.-China Young Leaders Forum.

Praise For…

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Jon Krakauer Joshua Cooper Ramo deftly conveys why he and a handful of kindred souls feel compelled to fly small airplanes right at the edge of what's possible, and sometimes beyond. The author is a risk-taker on the page as well as in the sky, and the rewards of this fine book are commensurate with the chances taken. Ramo's is an original voice to be sure, but in his inflections one can detect echoes of James Salter, Peter Matthiessen, Norman Maclean, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -- a resonance that reflects well on all parties.

Outside Magazine [Ramo's] a strong, reflective storyteller. Exploring what drives him to take ridiculous chances, he turns this book into an eminently readable meditation on humankind's craving for risk.

Time Magazine When he's in the cockpit performing feats of gritty derring-do (and occasionally derring-don't), his airplane groaning and shuddering with the strain, the book soars.

The Economist Ramo writes so well that it is infectious.

Colonel (Ret.) Frank Borman Ramo has the right stuff and so does his book. It's a classic.