Overview

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING EDDIE REDMAYNE and FELICITY JONES A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW STATESMAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW REPUBLIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A TIME MAGAZINE TOP 10 NONFICTION From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who in the 1860s flew seven miles above the earth – without oxygen. Falling Upwards has inspired the Major Motion Picture The Aeronauts – in cinemas SOON. In a glorious fusion of history, art, science and biography, this is a book about what balloons give rise to: the spirit of discovery, and the brilliant humanity of recklessness, vision and hope.

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9780008380267

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Reviews

SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: JIM CRACE, GUARDIAN - `A whole wide world of significance' SARAH SANDS, NEW STATESMAN - `Sheer delight' MICHAEL PRODGER, EVENING STANDARD - `Picaresque history' DAN JONES, DAILY TELEGRAPH - `Tremendously inventive' LEV GROSSMAN, TIME MAGAZINE - `Thrilling history' CHLOE SCHAMA, NEW REPUBLIC - `Unadulterated delight' KIRKUS - `Gripping' MAIL ON SUNDAY - `Tragic' `A book as delightful as it is unexpected ... [an] extraordinary cabinet of drifting aerial wonderment, a book that will linger and last, as it floats ever upward in the mind' Simon Winchester, Wall Street Journal `Holmes presents a full-blown, lyrical history of the same subject, investigating the strangeness, detachment and powerful romance of `falling upwards' into a seemingly alien and uninhabitable element. He lovingly charts ... a history full of awe and inefficiency ... A truly masterly storyteller' Evening Standard `Endlessly exhilarating ... packed full of swashbuckling stories, as well as fascinating historical accounts of the use of balloons. It is also a singularly beautiful book, wonderfully designed and illustrated and quite clearly a product of love' Mail on Sunday `What Holmes teases out ... is that ballooning gave us, quite literally, a different point of view ... This exhilarating book, wonderfully written, generously illustrated and beautifully published, captures all that and more' Spectator `Holmes conjures an extraordinarily vivid, violent, thrilling history, full of bizarre personalities, narrow escapes and fatal plunges. A peerless prose artist, infectiously curious' Time Magazine

Author Information

Richard Holmes is Professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia, and editor of the Harper Perennial series Classic Biographies launched in 2004. His is a Fellow of the British Academy, has honorary doctorates from UEA and the Tavistock Institute, and was awarded an OBE in 1992. His first book, Shelley: The Pursuit, won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1974. Coleridge: Early Visions won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year, and Dr Johnson & Mr Savage won the James Tait Black Prize. Coleridge: Darker Reflections, won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Heinemann Award. He has published two studies of European biography, Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer in 1985, and Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer in 2000.

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