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“A book as
delightful as it is unexpected, one that is a testament to the sheer pleasures
of writing about what you know, about what excites you and what gives you joy.
And what more joyous a topic than the hilarious insanities of ‘Falling
Upwards’!…Richard Holmes’ extraordinary cabinet of drifting aerial wonderment,
a book that will linger and last, as it floats ever upward in the mind.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“Holmes has written a book that is as compulsively
digestible as the Internet, and yet it is rounder and warmer and packed with
more facts and obscure stories than you would learn if you combed the Web for
months. Holmes’ writing is a carnival of historical delights; at every turn
there is a surprise, all adding up to a whole…Falling Upwards sneaks the trajectory of mankind into under three
hundred and fifty pages, which you can read in short dashes. You may not notice
it at the time, but what he is doing is changing the game.”
— New Yorker
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“No writer alive
and working in English today writes better about the past than Holmes…The
stories themselves are remarkable.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Holmes is a
charming and impassioned guide…his prose often reaches a moving pitch.”
— Newsday
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“Endlessly exhilarating…Falling Upwards is packed full of swashbuckling stories, as well as
fascinating historical accounts of the use of balloons.”
— Mail on Sunday
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“It is a tragic tale, punctuated with ghastly accidents,
but thanks to Holmes’ enthusiasm and eager curiosity it remains valiantly
airborne.”
— Sunday Times (London)
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“The book that gave me the most unadulterated delight this
year was nonfiction, Richard Holmes’ Falling
Upwards: How We Took to the Air. The book is nominally a history of the hot
air balloon, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a history of hope
and fantasy—and the quixotic characters who disobeyed that most fundamental
laws of physics and gave humans flight.”
— New Republic
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“[A] captivating and surely definitive history
of the madness of pre-Wright brothers ballooning.”
— Times (London)
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“His enthusiasm is one of the book’s many
pleasures…It is hard not to discern something similarly joyous in this
second-hand account [of ballooning narratives]…A spirited work.”
— Economist
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“[Richard Holmes’] wonderful history of the
early years of ballooning.”
— Daily Telegraph
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“[In] this charming, witty, and insightful
account of windblown ideas and adventures, Holmes succeeds neatly in matching
his form to his subject.”
— Sunday Telegraph (London)
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“Enthralling, picaresque history…Holmes cuts his
thrilling set-pieces with haunting images…Appropriately his prose is lighter
than air, elegantly traversing aviators and eras. It means that as his
balloonists embark on journeys full of danger and wonder the reader is
suspended in the basket alongside them.”
— Financial Times
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“Far from being a
straightforward history of the balloon, this is an uplifting celebration of its
aesthetic appeal and its ‘social and imaginative impact,’ of the writing it
inspired and of the ‘strangely mesmerizing’ ‘dash and eccentricity’ of the
balloonists themselves…The tone of the narrative is admiring, amused, and
elegiac…In its own nostalgic but analytical fashion, Falling Upwards
generates the same willing credulity that Holmes enjoys in the balloonists he
admires: ‘Indeed, I find it difficult not to fall for them.’”
— New York Review of Books
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“[Holmes] has a rare and infectious capacity for
wonderment…dazzling…I felt I was flying—with the sensations of hilarity,
ecstasy, and terror that are rightly provoked by our escape from gravity…while
I was reading Holmes’ heady, swoopingly aerodynamic book.”
— Observer (London)
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“Holmes is a distinguished biographer with a fine sense
of how individual lives reflect and redirect the larger forces that flow
through and around them…The aeronauts of the heroic age …seem glamorous and
admirable in their pursuit of knowledge, fame, fortune, military superiority,
and sheer excitement.”
— Guardian (London)
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“This is a book in which the delight the author
clearly took in researching and writing it carries over to the reader…puckish
is its pleasure in its details and in its gusts of digression…He has a lovely
wit and ease of address…Above all what Holmes teases out…is the very
interesting idea that ballooning gave us, quite literally, a different point of
view…It offers a wholly novel experience of sublimity…This exhilarating book,
wonderfully written, generously illustrated and beautifully published, captures
all that and more.”
— Spectator (London)
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“I hopped aboard for
his beguiling story of how we, physically and imaginatively, first took to the
air. You should too.”
— Daily Beast
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“Beautifully written and lovingly researched.”
— Country Life
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“The author’s own love of aerostats and aerostation (Holmes’s favorite word for ‘ballooning’) shines through in the buoyancy of his text…This title will be a fascinating read for anyone interested in flighty expeditionary history, and it’s likely to fly off many library shelves.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
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“Gripping…Meticulous history illuminated and
animated by personal passion, carried aloft by volant prose.”
— Kirkus (starred review)
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“An unconventional history of ballooning, this quirky, endearing,
and enticing collection melds the spirit of discovery with chemistry, physics,
engineering, and the imagination.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“In the style of his
The Age of Wonder, Holmes, fellow of the British Academy, recounts
adventurous stories of balloon pioneers in France, Britain, and the United States,
who built and tested airships, gloriously setting records for speed, distance,
and height, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Filled with period
drawings and early photographs, this entertaining history will be popular with
history readers.”
— Booklist
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“Few people realize the impact of
lighter-than-air flight on meteorology, military strategy, postal delivery,
and, of course, air and space travel. Gildart Jackson captures all the historic
significance of Holmes’ work, which provides a detailed account of the early
years of manned flight—from prehistoric Peru through the nineteenth century.
Jackson conveys his clear respect for the subject matter. He slowly but
accurately pronounces the many French names and phrases, and offers historical
quotes without characterization…This is a gripping history, professionally
performed.”
— AudioFile