ISBN: 9780525657507
Editorial: Knopf
Autor: Vanhoenacker, Mark
Año de edición: 2022
N° Paginas: 416
Tipo de pasta: Pasta dura
Descripción: This love letter to the cities of the world—from the airline pilot–author of Skyfaring—is "a journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energized, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives" (Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel).In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere— of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in the places where Mark hoped he could someday be anyone—perhaps even himself.Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of our planet and touching down in dozens of the storied cities he imagined as a child. He experiences these destinations during brief stays that he repeats month after month and year after year, giving him an unconventional and uniquely vivid perspective on the places that form our urban world.In this intimate yet expansive work that weaves travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and to love, through the lens of the hometown his heart has never quite left. As he explores emblematic facets of each city’s identity— the road signs of Los Angeles, the old gates of Jeddah, the snowy streets of Sapporo—he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home.Review“Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, Imagine a City is all entrancing. . . . Vanhoenacker's generous view is a reminder of just how extraordinary the whole mess of air travel still really is.” —Maureen Corrigan, “Fresh Air,” NPR"There’ve been plenty of books about cabin attendants’ adventures as part of a globe-trotting sorority bringing the mile-high club down to earth; Imagine a City is a much more intimate and thoughtful work from a man who, seeing ‘the small metal plate on which an arrow indicates qibla, the direction of Mecca’ in [a] hotel room in Abu Dhabi, uses it ‘to estimate the initial direction of the great circle route’ that will take him and his big bird back to London as the light comes up again. . . . What makes this captain of the heavens so appealing is a kind of all-American innocence that helps him savor ‘the palmistry of lit streets’ in Salt Lake City, seen from 38,000 feet above, as eagerly as he devours the poets of Delhi when touching down for 48 hours. Linking the places he flies between through snow, or gates, or the color blue, Vanhoenacker . . . seems to have a near-bottomless appetite for fresh sights and guidebook curiosities.” —Pico Iyer, Air Mail“Mark Vanhoenacker is a beautiful lyrical writer who uses his experience as a pilot to bring us constantly in touch with the transcendent and the other worldly. Imagine a City is a journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energised, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives.” —Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel“An inviting new volume that gives new meaning to the notion of the view from 42,000 feet. . . . Who knew that in command of one of humankind’s most remarkable modes of transport was a historian of humankind’s ancient history? . . . At the keyboard, Vanhoenacker has danced, and on his pages there is tumbling mirth indeed. . . . Along the way—in mid-flight, you might say—Vanhoenacker offers a lyrical look at what life is like behind those bolted cabin doors.” —David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe“A love song to cities the world over. . . . Visits to the great cities, especially in the company of one who loves them as Mr. Vanhoenacker does, can have a way of inspiring us and urging us to follow him and go there too. The author sees these places in the
- Idioma: Inglés
- Envío: Desde EE. UU.
- Libro Impreso y Nuevo
