2013, ISBN: 9781402280917

Gebundene Ausgabe

New York, New York, U.S.A.: Tor Books, 2001. First Edition First Printing Stated . Hard Back. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. 494 Pages. August 2001 Edition. Yellow boards wit… Mehr…

New York, New York, U.S.A.: Tor Books, 2001. First Edition First Printing Stated . Hard Back. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. 494 Pages. August 2001 Edition. Yellow boards with blue lettering. Dust jacket price $25.95 is unclipped. Remainder mark on bottom page edges. After a lifetime of training, Liath was so proud to have passed her final challenge and become a true mage, ready to journey the land of Elden Myr and find a Triad to bond with as an Illuminator. But the veery night of her triumph, her light fails her. She con no longer see the magical illumination guiders, and thus, despite the mage's badge uponn her breast, can no longer call herself Illuminator. Refusing to accept a lightless futlure, Liath travels to the city and petitions the Ennead, the senior mages of the land, for help and a cure. Before they will help her, they set a task for her to fulfill. She must find and capture the rogue Dark Mage, and bring him to the Ennead for justice; only then will her light be freed. So LIath goes on the most important journey of her life, for the future of the entire world rests on her success or faillure. But life is not all black and white, and Liath will have to make some tough decisions and learn from her own mistakes inn order to find the right and true answer --- and save the world inn the process., Tor Books, 2001, 4, Fountain Books/Collins-World, 1965. Paperback. Very Good. Picture may not match book; Fountain Books/Collins-World (1965); 8vo; white glossy covers with orange/blue/black lettering; light wear/scuffing to covers/spine with fore-edge/corners very lightly curling from use; spine/edges lightly sunned/faded with light yellowing to page edges; small scratch/crack near tail; else good. NO previous owner markings. Binding square and straight. Pictures available upon request.Orders WILL ship out on time from our facility! However, some delivery partners are taking longer than usual to deliver - you may experience delays as we try to keep everyone safe., Fountain Books/Collins-World, 1965, 3, Freedom House, 1989-03-22. Hardcover. Good/No DJ. Focus on Issues, No. 6, Freedom House (1989). Picture may not match book; HARDCOVER; 8vo; red cloth boards with large gold gilt lettering; no DJ, if one issued; ex-library markings include stamps/labels/card pocket; very light wear/scuffing to boards/spine; head/tail/top corners lightly bumped at tips; else Very Good+ condition. Text unmarked and clean. Pages crisp and white. Binding tight, square and straight. Pictures available upon request.Orders WILL ship out on time from our facility! However, some delivery partners are taking longer than usual to deliver - you may experience delays as we try to keep everyone safe., Freedom House, 1989-03-22, 2.5, Sourcebooks. Very Good. 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches. Paperback. 2013. 320 pages. <br>A New York Times bestseller For millions of peopl e, travel by air is a confounding, uncomfortable, and even fearfu l experience. Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the web' s popular Ask the Pilot feature, separates the fact from fallacy and tells you everything you need to know... ?How planes fly, an d a revealing look at the men and women who fly them ?Straight ta lk on turbulence, pilot training, and safety ?The real story on c ongestion, delays, and the dysfunction of the modern airport ?The myths and misconceptions of cabin air and cockpit automation ?Te rrorism in perspective, and a provocative look at security ?Airfa res, seating woes, and the pitfalls of airline customer service ? The colors and cultures of the airlines we love to hate Cockpit Confidential covers not only the nuts and bolts of flying, but al so the grand theater of air travel, from airport architecture to inflight service to the excitement of travel abroad. It's a thoug htful, funny, at times deeply personal look into the strange and misunderstood world of commercial flying. It's the ideal book fo r frequent flyers, nervous passengers, and global travelers. Ref reshed and vastly expanded from the original Ask the Pilot, with approximately 75 percent new material. Editorial Reviews Review Brilliant...A book to be savored and passed to friends. -- Willi am Langewiesche, Vanity Fair Nobody covers the airline experienc e like Patrick Smith. He brings balance and clarity to a subject all too often over-hyped. And, he's a damned good writer. -- Cliv e Irving, Conde Nast Traveler I wish I could fold up Patrick Sm ith and put him in my suitcase. He seems to know everything worth knowing about flying. -- Stephen Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomic s Patrick Smith is extraordinarily knowledgeable about modern av iation, and communicates beautifully in English, not in pilot-ese . Th ideal seatmate, companion, writer and explainer. -- Alex Bea m, Boston Globe A brilliant writer, Patrick Smith provides a lau gh-a-page tour of a misunderstood industry -- a journey into the world of aviation, stripped of the mumbo-jumbo and filled with hu mor and insight. -- Christine Negroni, aviation correspondent and author of Flying Lessons Patrick Smith doesn't just know everyt hing about air travel, he possesses a rare knack for explaining i t in lucid and witty prose. -- Barbara Peterson, Condé Nast Trave ler Patrick Smith is one of the best writers around, period, whi ch certainly makes him by far the best writer ever to have earned a commercial pilot's license. A soaring accomplishment, indispen sable for anyone who travels by air, which means everyone. -- Jam es Kaplan Wonderful -- Rudy Maxa Patrick Smith manages to demys tify the experience and remind us of the magic of aviation. Also he has a great sense of humor - which is critical when you are we dged into seat 14D on a regional jet. -- Chris Bohjalian Brillia ntly down to earth and reassuring -- Cath Urquhart, The Times (Lo ndon) What a pleasure it is reading Patrick Smith's surprisingl y elegant explanations and commentary. The world needs somebody w riting E.B. White simple and sensible about a topic everyone has a question about. -- Berke Breathed Patrick Smith doesn't just know everything about air travel, he possesses a rare knack for e xplaining it in lucid and witty prose. -- Barbara Peterson, Con dé Nast TraveleCockpit Confidential is the document that belongs in the seat-back pocket in front of you. -- David Pogue, New Yor k Times correspondent and PBS television host About the Author P atrick Smith is a New York Times bestselling author, airline pilo t, air travel writer, and the host of www.askthepilot.com. He has visited more than seventy countries and always asks for a window seat. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Excerpt. ® Reprint ed by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction The Painter 's Brush More than ever, air travel is a focus of curiosity, int rigue, anxiety, and anger. In the chapters that follow I will do my best to provide answers for the curious, reassurance for the a nxious, and unexpected facts for the deceived. It won't be easy, and I begin with a simple premise: everything you think you know about flying is wrong. That's an exaggeration, I hope, but not a n outrageous starting point in light of what I'm up against. Comm ercial aviation is a breeding ground for bad information, and the extent to which different myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theor ies have become embedded in the prevailing wisdom is startling. E ven the savviest frequent flyers are prone to misconstruing much of what actually goes on. It isn't surprising. Air travel is a c omplicated, inconvenient, and often scary affair for millions of people, and at the same time it's cloaked in secrecy. Its mysteri es are concealed behind a wall of specialized jargon, corporate r eticence, and an irresponsible media. Airlines, it hardly needs s aying, aren't the most forthcoming of entities, while journalists and broadcasters like to keep it simple and sensational. It's ha rd to know who to trust or what to believe. I'll give it my best shot. And in doing so, I will tell you how a plane stays in the air, yes. I'll address your nuts-and-bolts concerns and tackle th ose insufferable myths. However, this is not a book about flying, per se. I will not burden readers with gee-whiz specifications a bout airplanes. I am not writing for gearheads or those with a pr edisposed interest in planes; my readers don't want to see an aer ospace engineer's schematic of a jet engine, and a technical disc ussion about cockpit instruments or aircraft hydraulics is guaran teed to be tedious and uninteresting?especially to me. Sure, we'r e all curious how fast a plane goes, how high it flies, how many statistical bullet points can be made of its wires and plumbing. But as both author and pilot, my infatuation with flight goes bey ond the airplane itself, encompassing the fuller, richer drama of getting from here to there?the theater of air travel, as I like to call it. For most of us who grow up to become airline pilots, flying isn't just something we fell into after college. Ask any pilot where his love of aviation comes from, and the answer almos t always goes back to early childhood?to some ineffable, hard-wir ed affinity. Mine certainly did. My earliest crayon drawings were of planes, and I took flying lessons before I could drive. Just the same, I have never met another pilot whose formative obsessio ns were quite like mine. I have limited fascination with the sky or with the seat-of-the-pants thrills of flight itself. As a youn gster, the sight of a Piper Cub meant nothing to me. Five minutes at an air show watching the Blue Angels do barrel rolls, and I w as bored to tears. What enthralled me instead were the workings o f the airlines: the planes they flew and the places they went. I n the fifth grade I could recognize a Boeing 727-100 from a 727-2 00 by the shape of the intake of its center engine (oval, not rou nd). I could spend hours cloistered in my bedroom or at the dinin g room table, poring over the route maps and timetables of Pan Am , Aeroflot, Lufthansa, and British Airways, memorizing the names of the foreign capitals they flew to. Next time you're wedged in economy, flip to the route maps in the back of the inflight magaz ine. I could spend hours studying those three-panel foldouts and their crazy nests of city-pairs, immersed in a kind of junior pil ot porno. I knew the logos and liveries of all the prominent airl ines (and many of the nonprominent ones) and could replicate them freehand with a set of colored pencils. Thus I learned geograph y as thoroughly as I learned aviation. For most pilots, the world beneath those lines of the route map remains a permanent abstrac tion, countries and cultures of little or no interest beyond the airport fence or the perimeter of the layover hotel. For others, as happened to me, there's a point when those places become meani ngful. One feels an excitement not merely from the act of moving through the air, but from the idea of going somewhere. You're not just flying, you're traveling. The full, beautiful integration o f flight and travel, travel and flight. Are they not the same thi ng? To me they are. One can inspire the other, sure, but I never would have traipsed off to so many countries in my free time?from Cambodia to Botswana, Sri Lanka to Brunei?if I hadn't fallen in love with aviation first. If ever this connection struck me in a moment of clarity, it was a night several years ago during a vac ation to Mali, in West Africa. Though I could write pages about t he wonders and strangeness of West Africa, one of the trip's most vivid moments took place at the airport in Bamako, moments after our plane touched down from Paris. Two hundred of us descended t he drive-up stairs into a sinister midnight murk. The air was mis ty and smelled of woodsmoke. Yellow beams from military-style spo tlights crisscrossed the tarmac. We were paraded solemnly around the exterior of the aircraft, moving aft in a wide semicircle tow ard the arrivals lounge. There was something ceremonial and ritua listic about it. I remember walking beneath the soaring, blue-and -white tail of Air France, the plane's auxiliary turbine screamin g into the darkness. It was all so exciting and, to use a politic ally incorrect word, exotic. And that incredible airplane is what brought us there. In a matter of hours, no less?a voyage that on ce would have taken weeks by ship and desert caravan. The discon nect between air travel and culture seems to me wholly unnatural, yet we've seen a virtually clean break. Nobody gives a damn anym ore how you get there?the means coldly separated from the ends. F or most people, whether bound for Kansas or Kathmandu, the airpla ne is a necessary evil, incidental to the journey but no longer p art of it. An old girlfriend of mine, an artist who would have no trouble appreciating the play of light in a seventeenth-century painting by Vermeer, found my opinions utterly perplexing. Like m ost people, she analogized airplanes merely as tools. The sky was the canvas, she believed; the jetliner as discardable as the pai nter's brush. I disagree, for as a brush's stroke represents the moment of artistic inspiration, what is travel without the journe y? We've come to view flying as yet another impressive but ultim ately uninspiring technological realm. There I am, sitting in a B oeing 747, a plane that if tipped onto its nose would rise as tal l as a 20-story office tower. I'm at 33,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, traveling at 600 miles per hour, bound for the Far East. And what are the passengers doing? Complaining, sulking, tapping glumly into their laptops. A man next to me is upset over a dent in his can of ginger ale. This is the realization, perhaps, of a fully evolved technology. Progress, one way or the other, mandate s that the extraordinary become the ordinary. But don't we lose v aluable perspective when we begin to equate the commonplace, more or less by definition, with the tedious? Aren't we forfeiting so mething important when we sneer indifferently at the sight of an airplane?at the sheer impressiveness of being able to throw down a few hundred dollars and travel halfway around the world at near ly the speed of sound? It's a tough sell, I know, in this age of long lines, grinding delays, overbooked planes, and inconsolable babies. To be clear, I am not extolling the virtues of tiny seats or the culinary subtlety of half-ounce bags of snack mix. The in dignities and hassles of modern air travel require little elabora tion and are duly noted. But believe it or not, there is still pl enty about flying for the traveler to savor and appreciate. I'm hesitant to say that we've developed a sense of entitlement, but it's something like that. Our technological triumphs aside, consi der also the industry's remarkable safety record and the fact tha t fares have remained startlingly cheap, even with tremendous sur ges in the price of fuel. Sure, years ago, passengers could enjoy a five-course meal served by a tuxedoed flight attendant before retiring to a private sleeping berth. My first airplane ride was in 1974: I remember my father in a suit and tie and double helpin gs of fresh cheesecake on a ninety-minute domestic flight. The th ing was, getting on a plane was expensive. This will be lost on m any people today, young people especially, but once upon a time, college kids didn't zip home for a few days over Christmas. You d idn't grab a last minute seat for $99 and pop over to Las Vegas?o r to Mallorca or Phuket?for a long weekend. Flying was a luxury, and people indulged sporadically, if at all. In 1939, aboard Pan Am's Dixie Clipper, it cost $750 to fly round-trip between New Yo rk and France. That's equal to well over $11,000 in today's money . In 1970, it cost the equivalent of $2,700 to fly from New York to Hawaii. Things changed. Planes, for one, became more efficien t. Aircraft like the 707 and the 747 made long-haul travel afford able to the masses. Then the effects of deregulation kicked in, c hanging forever the way airlines competed. Fares plummeted, and p assengers poured in. Yes, flying became more aggravating and less comfortable. It also became affordable for almost everybody. I have learned never to underestimate the contempt people hold for airlines and the degree to which they hate to fly. While some of this contempt is well deserved, much of it is unfair. Today a pas senger can, in a backpack and flip-flops, traverse the oceans for the equivalent of a few pennies per mile, in near-perfect safety and with an 85 percent chance of arriving on time. Is that reall y such an awful way to travel? Meanwhile, if you're that insatiab ly eager to revisit those luxurious indulgences of aviation's gol den years, well, you can do that too, by purchasing a first or bu siness class ticket?for less than what it cost fifty years ago. < /div ., Sourcebooks, 2013, 3<

2013, ISBN: 9781402280917

Sourcebooks. Very Good. 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches. Paperback. 2013. 320 pages. <br>A New York Times bestseller For millions of peopl e, travel by air is a confounding, uncomfortable, a… Mehr…

Sourcebooks. Very Good. 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches. Paperback. 2013. 320 pages. <br>A New York Times bestseller For millions of peopl e, travel by air is a confounding, uncomfortable, and even fearfu l experience. Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the web' s popular Ask the Pilot feature, separates the fact from fallacy and tells you everything you need to know... ?How planes fly, an d a revealing look at the men and women who fly them ?Straight ta lk on turbulence, pilot training, and safety ?The real story on c ongestion, delays, and the dysfunction of the modern airport ?The myths and misconceptions of cabin air and cockpit automation ?Te rrorism in perspective, and a provocative look at security ?Airfa res, seating woes, and the pitfalls of airline customer service ? The colors and cultures of the airlines we love to hate Cockpit Confidential covers not only the nuts and bolts of flying, but al so the grand theater of air travel, from airport architecture to inflight service to the excitement of travel abroad. It's a thoug htful, funny, at times deeply personal look into the strange and misunderstood world of commercial flying. It's the ideal book fo r frequent flyers, nervous passengers, and global travelers. Ref reshed and vastly expanded from the original Ask the Pilot, with approximately 75 percent new material. Editorial Reviews Review Brilliant...A book to be savored and passed to friends. -- Willi am Langewiesche, Vanity Fair Nobody covers the airline experienc e like Patrick Smith. He brings balance and clarity to a subject all too often over-hyped. And, he's a damned good writer. -- Cliv e Irving, Conde Nast Traveler I wish I could fold up Patrick Sm ith and put him in my suitcase. He seems to know everything worth knowing about flying. -- Stephen Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomic s Patrick Smith is extraordinarily knowledgeable about modern av iation, and communicates beautifully in English, not in pilot-ese . Th ideal seatmate, companion, writer and explainer. -- Alex Bea m, Boston Globe A brilliant writer, Patrick Smith provides a lau gh-a-page tour of a misunderstood industry -- a journey into the world of aviation, stripped of the mumbo-jumbo and filled with hu mor and insight. -- Christine Negroni, aviation correspondent and author of Flying Lessons Patrick Smith doesn't just know everyt hing about air travel, he possesses a rare knack for explaining i t in lucid and witty prose. -- Barbara Peterson, Condé Nast Trave ler Patrick Smith is one of the best writers around, period, whi ch certainly makes him by far the best writer ever to have earned a commercial pilot's license. A soaring accomplishment, indispen sable for anyone who travels by air, which means everyone. -- Jam es Kaplan Wonderful -- Rudy Maxa Patrick Smith manages to demys tify the experience and remind us of the magic of aviation. Also he has a great sense of humor - which is critical when you are we dged into seat 14D on a regional jet. -- Chris Bohjalian Brillia ntly down to earth and reassuring -- Cath Urquhart, The Times (Lo ndon) What a pleasure it is reading Patrick Smith's surprisingl y elegant explanations and commentary. The world needs somebody w riting E.B. White simple and sensible about a topic everyone has a question about. -- Berke Breathed Patrick Smith doesn't just know everything about air travel, he possesses a rare knack for e xplaining it in lucid and witty prose. -- Barbara Peterson, Con dé Nast TraveleCockpit Confidential is the document that belongs in the seat-back pocket in front of you. -- David Pogue, New Yor k Times correspondent and PBS television host About the Author P atrick Smith is a New York Times bestselling author, airline pilo t, air travel writer, and the host of www.askthepilot.com. He has visited more than seventy countries and always asks for a window seat. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Excerpt. ® Reprint ed by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction The Painter 's Brush More than ever, air travel is a focus of curiosity, int rigue, anxiety, and anger. In the chapters that follow I will do my best to provide answers for the curious, reassurance for the a nxious, and unexpected facts for the deceived. It won't be easy, and I begin with a simple premise: everything you think you know about flying is wrong. That's an exaggeration, I hope, but not a n outrageous starting point in light of what I'm up against. Comm ercial aviation is a breeding ground for bad information, and the extent to which different myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theor ies have become embedded in the prevailing wisdom is startling. E ven the savviest frequent flyers are prone to misconstruing much of what actually goes on. It isn't surprising. Air travel is a c omplicated, inconvenient, and often scary affair for millions of people, and at the same time it's cloaked in secrecy. Its mysteri es are concealed behind a wall of specialized jargon, corporate r eticence, and an irresponsible media. Airlines, it hardly needs s aying, aren't the most forthcoming of entities, while journalists and broadcasters like to keep it simple and sensational. It's ha rd to know who to trust or what to believe. I'll give it my best shot. And in doing so, I will tell you how a plane stays in the air, yes. I'll address your nuts-and-bolts concerns and tackle th ose insufferable myths. However, this is not a book about flying, per se. I will not burden readers with gee-whiz specifications a bout airplanes. I am not writing for gearheads or those with a pr edisposed interest in planes; my readers don't want to see an aer ospace engineer's schematic of a jet engine, and a technical disc ussion about cockpit instruments or aircraft hydraulics is guaran teed to be tedious and uninteresting?especially to me. Sure, we'r e all curious how fast a plane goes, how high it flies, how many statistical bullet points can be made of its wires and plumbing. But as both author and pilot, my infatuation with flight goes bey ond the airplane itself, encompassing the fuller, richer drama of getting from here to there?the theater of air travel, as I like to call it. For most of us who grow up to become airline pilots, flying isn't just something we fell into after college. Ask any pilot where his love of aviation comes from, and the answer almos t always goes back to early childhood?to some ineffable, hard-wir ed affinity. Mine certainly did. My earliest crayon drawings were of planes, and I took flying lessons before I could drive. Just the same, I have never met another pilot whose formative obsessio ns were quite like mine. I have limited fascination with the sky or with the seat-of-the-pants thrills of flight itself. As a youn gster, the sight of a Piper Cub meant nothing to me. Five minutes at an air show watching the Blue Angels do barrel rolls, and I w as bored to tears. What enthralled me instead were the workings o f the airlines: the planes they flew and the places they went. I n the fifth grade I could recognize a Boeing 727-100 from a 727-2 00 by the shape of the intake of its center engine (oval, not rou nd). I could spend hours cloistered in my bedroom or at the dinin g room table, poring over the route maps and timetables of Pan Am , Aeroflot, Lufthansa, and British Airways, memorizing the names of the foreign capitals they flew to. Next time you're wedged in economy, flip to the route maps in the back of the inflight magaz ine. I could spend hours studying those three-panel foldouts and their crazy nests of city-pairs, immersed in a kind of junior pil ot porno. I knew the logos and liveries of all the prominent airl ines (and many of the nonprominent ones) and could replicate them freehand with a set of colored pencils. Thus I learned geograph y as thoroughly as I learned aviation. For most pilots, the world beneath those lines of the route map remains a permanent abstrac tion, countries and cultures of little or no interest beyond the airport fence or the perimeter of the layover hotel. For others, as happened to me, there's a point when those places become meani ngful. One feels an excitement not merely from the act of moving through the air, but from the idea of going somewhere. You're not just flying, you're traveling. The full, beautiful integration o f flight and travel, travel and flight. Are they not the same thi ng? To me they are. One can inspire the other, sure, but I never would have traipsed off to so many countries in my free time?from Cambodia to Botswana, Sri Lanka to Brunei?if I hadn't fallen in love with aviation first. If ever this connection struck me in a moment of clarity, it was a night several years ago during a vac ation to Mali, in West Africa. Though I could write pages about t he wonders and strangeness of West Africa, one of the trip's most vivid moments took place at the airport in Bamako, moments after our plane touched down from Paris. Two hundred of us descended t he drive-up stairs into a sinister midnight murk. The air was mis ty and smelled of woodsmoke. Yellow beams from military-style spo tlights crisscrossed the tarmac. We were paraded solemnly around the exterior of the aircraft, moving aft in a wide semicircle tow ard the arrivals lounge. There was something ceremonial and ritua listic about it. I remember walking beneath the soaring, blue-and -white tail of Air France, the plane's auxiliary turbine screamin g into the darkness. It was all so exciting and, to use a politic ally incorrect word, exotic. And that incredible airplane is what brought us there. In a matter of hours, no less?a voyage that on ce would have taken weeks by ship and desert caravan. The discon nect between air travel and culture seems to me wholly unnatural, yet we've seen a virtually clean break. Nobody gives a damn anym ore how you get there?the means coldly separated from the ends. F or most people, whether bound for Kansas or Kathmandu, the airpla ne is a necessary evil, incidental to the journey but no longer p art of it. An old girlfriend of mine, an artist who would have no trouble appreciating the play of light in a seventeenth-century painting by Vermeer, found my opinions utterly perplexing. Like m ost people, she analogized airplanes merely as tools. The sky was the canvas, she believed; the jetliner as discardable as the pai nter's brush. I disagree, for as a brush's stroke represents the moment of artistic inspiration, what is travel without the journe y? We've come to view flying as yet another impressive but ultim ately uninspiring technological realm. There I am, sitting in a B oeing 747, a plane that if tipped onto its nose would rise as tal l as a 20-story office tower. I'm at 33,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, traveling at 600 miles per hour, bound for the Far East. And what are the passengers doing? Complaining, sulking, tapping glumly into their laptops. A man next to me is upset over a dent in his can of ginger ale. This is the realization, perhaps, of a fully evolved technology. Progress, one way or the other, mandate s that the extraordinary become the ordinary. But don't we lose v aluable perspective when we begin to equate the commonplace, more or less by definition, with the tedious? Aren't we forfeiting so mething important when we sneer indifferently at the sight of an airplane?at the sheer impressiveness of being able to throw down a few hundred dollars and travel halfway around the world at near ly the speed of sound? It's a tough sell, I know, in this age of long lines, grinding delays, overbooked planes, and inconsolable babies. To be clear, I am not extolling the virtues of tiny seats or the culinary subtlety of half-ounce bags of snack mix. The in dignities and hassles of modern air travel require little elabora tion and are duly noted. But believe it or not, there is still pl enty about flying for the traveler to savor and appreciate. I'm hesitant to say that we've developed a sense of entitlement, but it's something like that. Our technological triumphs aside, consi der also the industry's remarkable safety record and the fact tha t fares have remained startlingly cheap, even with tremendous sur ges in the price of fuel. Sure, years ago, passengers could enjoy a five-course meal served by a tuxedoed flight attendant before retiring to a private sleeping berth. My first airplane ride was in 1974: I remember my father in a suit and tie and double helpin gs of fresh cheesecake on a ninety-minute domestic flight. The th ing was, getting on a plane was expensive. This will be lost on m any people today, young people especially, but once upon a time, college kids didn't zip home for a few days over Christmas. You d idn't grab a last minute seat for $99 and pop over to Las Vegas?o r to Mallorca or Phuket?for a long weekend. Flying was a luxury, and people indulged sporadically, if at all. In 1939, aboard Pan Am's Dixie Clipper, it cost $750 to fly round-trip between New Yo rk and France. That's equal to well over $11,000 in today's money . In 1970, it cost the equivalent of $2,700 to fly from New York to Hawaii. Things changed. Planes, for one, became more efficien t. Aircraft like the 707 and the 747 made long-haul travel afford able to the masses. Then the effects of deregulation kicked in, c hanging forever the way airlines competed. Fares plummeted, and p assengers poured in. Yes, flying became more aggravating and less comfortable. It also became affordable for almost everybody. I have learned never to underestimate the contempt people hold for airlines and the degree to which they hate to fly. While some of this contempt is well deserved, much of it is unfair. Today a pas senger can, in a backpack and flip-flops, traverse the oceans for the equivalent of a few pennies per mile, in near-perfect safety and with an 85 percent chance of arriving on time. Is that reall y such an awful way to travel? Meanwhile, if you're that insatiab ly eager to revisit those luxurious indulgences of aviation's gol den years, well, you can do that too, by purchasing a first or bu siness class ticket?for less than what it cost fifty years ago. < /div ., Sourcebooks, 2013, 3<

ISBN: 9781402280917

Sourcebooks. Paperback. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex librar… Mehr…

Sourcebooks. Paperback. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex library copy, will have the markings and stickers associated from the library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included., Sourcebooks, 2.5<

2013, ISBN: 9781402280917

Paperback, Gebraucht, guter Zustand, Size: 5x1x8;, [PU: Sourcebooks]