A New York Times Notable Book - "An elegant, nonlinear reflection on how flying on a commercial airliner--even while painfully folded into a seat in coach--can lift the soul." --The New York Times Book Review

In the twenty-first century, airplane flight--once a remarkable feat of human ingenuity--has been relegated to the realm of the mundane. In this mesmerizing reflection on flying, Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flying, helps us to reimagine what we--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 and reawakening our capacity to be amazed.