Author:Nicholas Schmidle
'Masterly' New York Times
'Riveting' Scott Kelly
'Remarkable' The Times
When Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, his goal was simple: to offer paying customers a trip to space by the end of the decade. Seventeen years, countless delays, and one catastrophic crash later, his space tourism dream may finally be on the verge of reality.
Now, a New Yorker journalist offers the definitive portrait of the adventurers leading the way to the stars. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Virgin's lead test pilot, Mark Stucky, Test Gods describes the making of a modern astronaut: from starry-eyed youth to NASA, the Air Force, and Virgin Galactic; and through dozens of gruelling test flights to his first successful trip beyond the earth's atmosphere.
The result is the most vivid exploration of an astronaut's inner life since Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. It offers an intimate and unique insight into the new space race.
Adventure in its purest form - rich with risk, courage and friendships.
—— BEAR GRYLLSA Right Stuff for our moment of space travel . . . Riveting . . . A deeply reported and deeply personal book. It is a masterly work.
—— New York Times Book ReviewRiveting . . . This is the book about the new space race you've been waiting to read. An instant classic.
—— SCOTT KELLY, astronaut and author of EnduranceAn absolute thrill . . . A hugely ambitious feat of reporting and storytelling, and a fitting twenty-first century sequel to The Right Stuff.
Unique, fascinating, compulsively readable, brilliantly reported with unprecedented access, a kick-ass adventure story . . . Just strap yourself in and get ready for one helluva ride.
—— BUZZ BISSINGER, author of Friday Night LightsSo exciting. A new generation with The Right Stuff.
—— DAN SNOWThe book promises to profile the test pilots risking everything for grand dreams of space. What it actually does is much more interesting . . . Schmidle's care over terrestrial scenes sets this book apart from more familiar representations of airborne masculinity.
—— Washington PostA remarkable new book about the modern space race.
—— The TimesDoes an admirable job of taking readers behind the scenes at Virgin Galactic . . . We get a sense of the precariousness of Virgin Galactic's spaceflight technology.
—— ArsTechnicaAI 2041 builds a multilayered view of a future where artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies become embedded in our lives, for good or ill...Well-crafted . . . This book serves as an imaginative invitation to consider the potential for harm that may arise from [AI] projects, however unintended
—— ScienceI absolutely love the way Mark Vanhoenacker writes about the world; he gives you a whole new way of seeing
—— Jenny Colgan, author of SUNRISE BY THE SEAAn utterly remarkable and original travel book. Like Jan Morris and Pico Iyer, Vanhoenacker weaves memoir and travelogue, using his unusual perch as a pilot to take us on an incredible journey to dozens of cities around the world. Like Italo Calvino, he somehow weaves it all into one, a painfully beautiful cubist city of memory and dreams that rises out of his warm and lyrical prose
—— Andrew Blum, author of TUBES and THE WEATHER MACHINEA tour de force of descriptive power and honesty; I can think of no other book like this one
—— Tom Zoellner, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionQuietly thoughtful without being either self-conscious or -indulgent. Vanhoenacker retains a refreshing sense of good fortune and even amazement that one can step into a cylindrical metal tube and emerge hours later into different air, different sunlight and a different world picture
—— Peter Neville-Hadley , South China Morning PostMark Vanhoenacker...weaves an account of this hugely gifted writer's small-town gay boyhood through evocations of the cities around the world he has come to love as an airline pilot
—— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*Beautiful, meditative and insightful
—— Shafik Meghji, author of Crossed off the Map: Travels in BoliviaFew books nowadays truly break new ground but Mark Vanhoenacker succeeds in doing so with Imagine a City. Sensitive, smart and utterly fascinating, I have recommended it to almost everyone I know
—— Caroline Eden, journalist and author of Red Sands: Reportage and Recipes Through Central Asia, from Hinterland to HeartlandMark Vanhoenacker is more than a British Airways pilot with the soul of a poet - he is without doubt the greatest travel writer since Bruce Chatwin
—— Tony Parsons, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Your Neighbour’s WifeYou couldn't ask for a more literary pilot to have up at the sharp end of your next flight than Mark Vanhoenacker...[but] flying isn't so front and centre of his book Imagine a City, this time it's about where his flying takes him.
—— Tony Wheeler, author and co-founder of Lonely PlanetA wonderful volume on the whole Apollo program. As a geologist who worked closely with the astronauts and taught them how to photograph the Moon during the Apollo missions, I was amazed at the detail and clarity of these remastered versions Andy has produced, 50 years later. Also impressive is the research to produce such an accurate record. The information along with each photograph helps tell the story of the program in such an immersive way. He really has done a great deal for the legacy of the Apollo program
—— Dr Farouk El-BazA handsome volume. . . The digitally restored images in Apollo Remastered bring NASA's moon voyages to life as never before
—— Simon Ings , New Scientist, Best Books of the YearIn Mission Control, imagination pieced together grainy television images, crew voice reports and the flight plan, to portray mission events. Now, for the first time, APOLLO REMASTERED brings the glory of Apollo and the explorers into sharp focus. 50 years later, I can finally look over the shoulder of Mike Collins and Al Bean and see what they saw. I become part of the experience, as if I were a member of the crew.
—— Gene Kranz, Apollo Flight DirectorApollo Remastered is a fine collection of remastered photographs that depicts the real essence of the Apollo program. It brought back many memories of my time during the missions - an incredible book that will surely be enjoyed for many generations to come
—— Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 CommanderUsing cutting edge enhancement techniques, Andy Saunders has created the highest quality Apollo photographs ever produced. He's also produced the first ever clear image of the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong. It's not surprising that his new book, Apollo Remastered has become a Sunday Times bestseller; showcasing photographs that are literally out of this world
—— ITV NewsRead this book (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)
—— IndependentElizabeth Kolbert's cautionary tale, The Sixth Extinction, offers us a cogent overview of a harrowing biological challenge. The reporting is exceptional, the contextualizing exemplary (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)
—— Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams and HorizonThe Sixth Mass Extinction is the biggest story on Earth, period, and Elizabeth Kolbert tells it with imagination, rigor, deep reporting, and a capacious curiosity about all the wondrous creatures and ecosystems that exist, or have existed, on our planet. The result is an important book full of love and loss (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)
—— David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and SpilloverFascinating
—— Chris Fitch , GeographicalIn Under a White Sky...Elizabeth Kolbert...[combines] curiosity with an acerbic wit to explore humanity's obsession with controlling nature... Kolbert's skill is in presenting compelling stories from the Anthropocene and letting us judge for ourselves
—— James Dacey , Physics World