“There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.” — W.W. Windstaff “Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up.” — Walter Cunningham The author piloted Air Force heavy jets for over two decades, in peacetime and wartime. IF YOU FLY... DON’T CRASH! (Confessions of a White-knuckle Pilot) highlights some of the good, the bad, and the simply silly aspects of aviation experienced during his thousands of hours airborne.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made. After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious destination is to fly home, but she could take another path: return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife. As the story unfolds, Dawn’s two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she’s never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices . . . or do our choices make us? And who would you be if you hadn’t turned out to be the person you are right now?
A hearing about the collision of an airliner with a flock of birds which forced the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, to land the crippled aircraft on the Hudson River, which he did successfully.
First published in 1993. Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? Does time flow at an even rate? These are just two of the questions that won't be answered in Pseudo-Problems. This book explains how problems are dissolved rather than solved. Roy Sorenson takes the most important and interesting examples from one hundred years of analytic philosophy (and the odd one from the centuries before) to consolidate a new theory of dissolution. Pseudo-Problems is a fast-moving, fascinating alternative history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, and a fine example of what philosophical analysis should be. Not least, it is an important contribution to the debates about creativity and problem solving.
