Small-town crop duster Dusty Crophopper participates in a race around the world.

Polly Vacher wanted to become the first pilot to complete a solo flight around the world via both Poles in a single-engine aircraft. Her 60,000 mile voyage would take her to every continent. She prepared meticulously for two years and had garnered multifarious sponsors. However, as she took off, flanked by a Hurricane and a Spitfire, and waved off by her family and the Prince of Wales, she suddenly felt so alone. She had begun a remarkable expedition that would gain her three world records, but would also see her encounter extremes of weather and emotion, kindness, obstruction and also a little political intrigue.

A pilot’s account of her around-the-world adventure, including color photos. On May 6, 2003, Polly Vacher, a fifty-nine-year-old mother of three, took off from an airport in Birmingham, England, seeking to become the first pilot to complete a solo flight around the world, via both Poles, in a single-engine aircraft. Despite having only a few years of flying experience, Polly had already completed a lateral solo circumnavigation of the world in 2001 for the charity Flying Scholarships for the Disabled. This second challenge, for the same charity, would make that achievement look like a casual jaunt. There would be no margin for error. Her voyage to the ice was a thirty-five thousand–mile adventure in her Piper Dakota that would take her to at least thirty different countries on every single continent. She had prepared meticulously for two years, was fully insured, and had all the requisite permits and visas. With her kinetic enthusiasm, charm, and persistence, she had already garnered numerous sponsors. However, as she took off on that blustery spring day—flanked by a Hurricane and a Spitfire and waved off by her family and the Prince of Wales—she suddenly felt so alone. She had begun a remarkable expedition that would gain her three world records—but would also encounter extremes of weather and emotion, much kindness and obstruction, and a little political intrigue. This is the story of that adventure. “Truly inspirational.” —Aviation News

New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A Library Journal Best Science and Technology Book of the Year An exhilarating exploration of the science and wonder of global bird migration. In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we’ve learned of these key migrations—how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an annual basis—is nothing short of extraordinary. Bird migration entails almost unfathomable endurance, like a sparrow-sized sandpiper that will fly nonstop from Canada to Venezuela—the equivalent of running 126 consecutive marathons without food, water, or rest—avoiding dehydration by "drinking" moisture from its own muscles and organs, while orienting itself using the earth’s magnetic field through a form of quantum entanglement that made Einstein queasy. Crossing the Pacific Ocean in nine days of nonstop flight, as some birds do, leaves little time for sleep, but migrants can put half their brains to sleep for a few seconds at a time, alternating sides—and their reaction time actually improves. These and other revelations convey both the wonder of bird migration and its global sweep, from the mudflats of the Yellow Sea in China to the remote mountains of northeastern India to the dusty hills of southern Cyprus. This breathtaking work of nature writing from Pulitzer Prize finalist Scott Weidensaul also introduces readers to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges. Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork, in A World on the Wing Weidensaul unveils with dazzling prose the miracle of nature taking place over our heads.

Based on the true World War II stories of America's first female military pilots, this historic novel follows the story of a young woman from a dirt-poor farm family. Sally Ketchum has little chance of bettering her life until a mysterious barnstormer named Tex teaches her to fly and to dare to love. But when Tex dies in a freak accident, Sally must make her own way in the world. She enrolls in the U.S. military's Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program at a special school known as Avenger, where she learns to fly the biggest, fastest, meanest planes. She also reluctantly becomes involved with Beau Bayard, a flight instructor and aspiring writer who seems to offer her everything she could want. Despite her obvious mastery of flying, many members of the military are unable to accept that a “skirt” has any place in a cockpit. Soon Sally finds herself struggling against a high-powered Washington lawyer that wants to close down Avenger once and for all.

There is a common but often unspoken arrogance on the part of outside observers that folk science and traditional knowledge—the type developed by Native communities and tribal groups—is inferior to the “formal science” practiced by Westerners. In this lucidly written and humanistic account of the O’odham tribes of Arizona and Northwest Mexico, ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea exposes the limitations of this assumption by exploring the rich ornithology that these tribes have generated about the birds that are native to their region. He shows how these peoples’ observational knowledge provides insights into the behaviors, mating habits, migratory patterns, and distribution of local bird species, and he uncovers the various ways that this knowledge is incorporated into the communities’ traditions and esoteric belief systems. Drawing on more than four decades of field and textual research along with hundreds of interviews with tribe members, Rea identifies how birds are incorporated, both symbolically and practically, into Piman legends, songs, art, religion, and ceremonies. Through highly detailed descriptions and accounts loaded with Native voice, this book is the definitive study of folk ornithology. It also provides valuable data for scholars of linguistics and North American Native studies, and it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans make sense of their world. It will be of interest to historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars of indigenous cultures and folk taxonomy.