Hello readers,

When you book your seat on a flight, from the comfort of your couch no less, do you ever pause and consider the marvel that is air travel? Do we ever stop and think just how far we’ve come? It’s a long cry certainly from the flight across the Atlantic Ocean that Alcock and Brown took.

Colum McCann captures the bone rattling intensity and magic of those hours of madness as two men, survivors of war, took to the clouds; this time to face an adversary of a different kind. What must have gone through Brown’s mind as he repeatedly left his s...