<b>**<i>Kirkus</i> Best Books of the Year (2013)**<br />**<i>Time Magazine</i> 10 Top Nonfiction Books of 2013**<br />**<i>The New Republic</i> Best Books of 2013**<br /></b><br />In this heart-lifting chronicle, Richard Holmes, author of the best-selling <i>The Age of Wonder</i>, follows the pioneer generation of balloon aeronauts, the daring and enigmatic men and women who risked their lives to take to the air (or fall into the sky). Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet is a compelling adventure that only Holmes could tell.<br /> <br />His accounts of the early Anglo-French balloon rivalries, the crazy firework flights of the beautiful Sophie Blanchard, the long-distance voyages of the American entrepreneur John Wise and French photographer Felix Nadar are dramatic and exhilarating. Holmes documents as well the balloons used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the Civil War (including a flight
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