Марк Ванхунакер — новинки

In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere-- of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in the places where Mark hoped he could someday be anyone--perhaps even himself.

Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of our planet and touching down in dozens of the storied cities he imagined as a child. He experiences these destinations during brief stays that he repeats month after month and year after year, giving him an unconventional and uniquely vivid perspective on the places that form our urban world.

In this intimate yet expansive work that weaves travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and to love, through the lens of the hometown his heart has never quite left. As he explores emblematic facets of each city's identity-- the road signs of Los Angeles, the old gates of Jeddah, the snowy streets of Sapporo--he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home.

Героическая эпоха, когда человек только учился покорять воздушную стихию, а профессия летчика была почти фантастической, осталась далеко в прошлом. Летательные аппараты стали для жителей XXI века обыденным транспортом, а путешествие по воздуху для многих превратилось в унылую рутину. Неужели в современном мире исчезла магия полета? Только не для Марка Ванхунакера, пилота Боинга 747! Он никогда не скучает за штурвалом и абсолютно уверен: всем нам самолет дарит "редкие часы высоты и легкости, когда можно заново открыть для себя смысл самых старых слов: путешествие, дорога, ветер, воздух, ночь, крыло, вода, земля, город". Читая эти рассказы об…

A poetic and nuanced exploration of the human experience of flight that reminds us of the full imaginative weight of our most ordinary journeys—and reawakens our capacity to be amazed.

The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight—a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity—to the realm of the mundane. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to reimagine 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, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity that affords us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.