Falling Upwards

Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture The Aeronauts

By: Richard Holmes

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eBook | 25 April 2013

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416 Pages

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NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING FELICITY JONES AND EDDIE REDMAYNE

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A NEW STATESMAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A DAILY TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A NEW REPUBLIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A TIME MAGAZINE TOP 10 NONFICTION BOOK OF 2013

From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists.

Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who in the 1860s flew seven miles above the earth - without oxygen.

Falling Upwards has inspired the Major Motion Picture The Aeronauts - in cinemas SOON.

In a glorious fusion of history, art, science and biography, this is a book about what balloons give rise to: the spirit of discovery, and the brilliant humanity of recklessness, vision and hope.

Industry Reviews

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'

'As compulsively digestible as the Internet, and yet it is rounder and warmer, and packed with more obscure stories than you would learn if you combed the Web for months. A carnival of historical delights ... 'Falling Upwards' sneaks the trajectory of mankind into under three hundred and fifty pages. You may not notice it at the time, but what he is doing is changing the game' New Yorker

'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

'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

'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

'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