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Richard Holmes

Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air Hardcover – 25 April 2013

by Richard Holmes (Author)

4.5 121 ratings

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Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air, and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject.

In this heart-lifting book, the Romantic biographer Richard Holmes floats across the world following the pioneer generation of balloon aeronauts, from the first heroic experiments of the Montgolfiers in 1780s to the tragic attempt to fly a balloon to the North Pole in the 1890s. It is a compelling adventure story of the kind that only Holmes could tell.

Dramatic sequences move from the early Anglo-French balloon rivalries, the crazy firework flights of beautiful Sophie Blanchard; the revelatory ascents over the great Victorian cities and sprawling industrial towns of Northern Europe; and the astonishing long-distance voyages of the American entrepreneur John Wise, and the French photographer Felix Nadar.

Later we find balloons used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the American Civil War (including a memorable flight by General Custer); the legendary tale of sixty balloons that escaped Paris during the Prussian siege of 1870; and the terrifying high-altitude flights of James Glaisher FRS who rose above seven miles without oxygen, helping to establish the new science of meteorology as well as the environmental notion – so important to us today – of a ‘fragile’ planet.

Besides the aeronauts themselves, readers will also discover the many writers and dreamers – from Mary Shelley to Edgar Alan Poe, from Charles Dickens to Jules Verne – who felt the imaginative impact of flight and allowed it to soar in their work.

Through all these adventures, the narrative continually lifts off in unexpected literary and scientific directions, exploring the interplay between technology and science fiction, the understanding of the biosphere, and the metaphysics of flight itself. Most of all, through the strange allure of the great balloonists, Holmes offers another of his subtle portraits of human endeavour, recklessness and vision.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

William Collins
Publication date

25 April 2013
Dimensions

15.9 x 3.9 x 24 cm
ISBN-10

0007386923
ISBN-13

978-0007386925
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Product description

Review

SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY:

JIM CRACE, GUARDIAN – ‘A whole wide world of significance’

SARAH SANDS, NEW STATESMAN – ‘Sheer delight’

MICHAEL PRODGER, EVENING STANDARD – ‘Picaresque history’

DAN JONES, DAILY TELEGRAPH – ‘Tremendously inventive’

LEV GROSSMAN, TIME MAGAZINE – ‘Thrilling history’

CHLOE SCHAMA, NEW REPUBLIC – ‘Unadulterated delight’

KIRKUS – ‘Gripping’

MAIL ON SUNDAY -‘Tragic’

‘A book as delightful as it is unexpected … [an] extraordinary cabinet of drifting aerial wonderment, a book that will linger and last, as it floats ever upward in the mind’ Simon Winchester, Wall Street Journal

Holmes presents a full-blown, lyrical history of the same subject, investigating the strangeness, detachment and powerful romance of ‘falling upwards’ into a seemingly alien and uninhabitable element. He lovingly charts … a history full of awe and inefficiency … A truly masterly storyteller’ Evening Standard

‘Endlessly exhilarating … packed full of swashbuckling stories, as well as fascinating historical accounts of the use of balloons. It is also a singularly beautiful book, wonderfully designed and illustrated and quite clearly a product of love’ Mail on Sunday

‘What Holmes teases out … is that ballooning gave us, quite literally, a different point of view … This exhilarating book, wonderfully written, generously illustrated and beautifully published, captures all that and more’ Spectator

‘Holmes conjures an extraordinarily vivid, violent, thrilling history, full of bizarre personalities, narrow escapes and fatal plunges. A peerless prose artist, infectiously curious’ Time Magazine

About the Author

Richard Holmes is the author of The Age of Wonder, which won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was one of the ten New York Times’ Best Books of the Year in 2009. His other biographies include Shelley: The Pursuit (winner of the 1974 Somerset Maugham Prize), Coleridge: Early Visions (winner of the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award), Coleridge: Darker Reflections (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Duff Cooper Prize), and Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage (winner of the 1993 James Tait Black Prize). This Long Pursuit completes the autobiographical trilogy begun in Footsteps (1985) and Sidetracks (2000). Holmes was awarded the OBE in 1992. He is the 2018 winner of the BIO Award presented by the Biographers International Organization for sustained achievement in biography. He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Collins (25 April 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0007386923
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007386925
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.9 x 3.9 x 24 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 707,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 149 in Air Sports
- 802 in Aviation History
- 1,049 in History of Discovery & Exploration

Customer reviews:
4.5 121 ratings

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Richard Holmes

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Richard Holmes was one of Britain's most distinguished and eminent military historians and broadcasters. For many years Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science, he also taught military history at Sandhurst. He was the author of many best-selling and widely acclaimed books including Redcoat, Tommy, Marlborough and Wellington, and famous for his BBC series such as War Walks, In the Footsteps of Churchill and Wellington. He served in the Territorial Army, retiring as a brigadier and Britain's most senior reservist, and was Colonel of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment from 1999 to 2007. Richard Holmes died suddenly in April 2011 from pneumonia. He had been suffering from non-Hodgkins' Lymphoma.

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Ian Thumwood

Fascinating account of the pioneering days of ballooning

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 August 2015

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This is a really good read. Some chapters are more interesting than the others with the military aspect of ballooning providing the more interesting chapters. I found the accounts of the American civil war and the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War to have been the most fascinating although the closer chapter about Salomon Andree was the most compelling even though I was familiar with the story of this tragedy.

I would say that this is an ideal holiday read. It is not too technical and cram-backed with fascinating and eccentric characters. The stories are quite staggering with accounts of pioneers like Glaisher and Nadar offering alternative approaches to what could be achieved with a balloon. The colour illustrations are lavish but the whole book is also peppered with black and white illustrations. As well as balloonist, a host of other characters like Custer , Zeppelin and Victor Hugo crop up so that the book also takes on board the character of social history as well as looking at the more important and interesting journeys. Thankfully the book isn't too heavy of technical detail and is by no means specialist. I would have liked to have learned a bit more about the evolution of airships but hopefully this is something that this author can turn his attention to in the future. All in all, this was a very interesting account of something about which I previously knew very little.

2 people found this helpful

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ACB(swansea)

The Story of The Early Conquest Of The Sky

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 June 2013

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This is a thoroughly researched account of the historical events that took mankind into the air. The oceans and the land had been and were being explored. The sky was the last pioneering frontier. Richard Holmes has lovingly written an entertaining journey into the origins of successful flight. A balloonist himself, he describes the venture as 'the mental release, the physical heart-lift, and the calm perilous descent'. Ballooning has involved adventure and expectations ranging from science, war, exploration, travel (steering a hazard), communication and even an air rescue operation in Paris. The bravado of the early exponents exposed to the unknown effects of altitude and destination are delineated with both tragic and humorous undertones.

From the first cross-channel success in 1785 to the first non-stop round the world flight in 1999, the author fills in the gaps. Ballooning from it's advent and intent is now largely a leisure industry not withstanding the enthusiasts. The author states that this book is 'not really about balloons at all. It is about what balloons gave rise to'. The spirit of adventure and the romanticism that authors and film-makers have developed is vivid as the dream-like description of the exhilaration of looking-down on the ground below. Not for my head for heights, but clearly popular.

A wonderful book, lavishly illustrated and a joy to possess and to read again and again.

4 people found this helpful

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xxxxxx

Falling Upwards. By Richard Holmes

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2014

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Another well writen Book from Richard Holmes. Though the subject was cover by Tom Rolt, years ago. This Book is well worth reading. Informative history, good adventure story, simply a good read. If you enjoyed, other Richard Holmes's work's, this is for you. If you have not, or interested in Ballons, then it is worth it, for the word's, on the page.
O by the way, because it deal's a great many people, many event's. It can easly, be pick-up, and put-down, with-out the loss of the story.

2 people found this helpful

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TeacherHist

Brilliant book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 September 2016

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Thoroughly enjoyable: Richard Holmes writes in a accessible and entertaining style and has a great eye for anecdote, characterisation and drama without sacrificing anything with regard to historical rigour. Each chapter tells a different gripping story, with my favourite being the use of balloons to break the siege of Paris in 1870-71. A great read.

One person found this helpful

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Mr C W Rigby

lovely book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2013

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I heard this as book at bedtime on radio 4. It's well written and the research done by the author was very detailed. it does help being a balloonist with an interest in the history of gas and hot air ballooning. It is a very good read.

One person found this helpful

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Piers Nye

Uplifting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 February 2015

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An absolutely spot on book about the extraordinary history of ballooning - brilliantly develops a theme started in The Age of Wonder. This is an important historical work on a very significant subject.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 July 2013

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I found this book very interesting and should appeal to anyone interested in history or the pioneers in the early days of flying.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 July 2013

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A very interesting story of the whole early history of ballooning and the very brave - foolish - people involved.

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Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air Hardcover – 25 April 2013

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