The New York Times–bestselling novel by the critically acclaimed author of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life and My Year Abroad. At 59, Jerry Battle is coasting through life. His favorite pastime is flying his small plane high above Long Island. Aloft, he can escape from the troubles that plague his family, neighbors, and loved ones on the ground. But he can't stay in the air forever. Only months before his 60th birthday, a culmination of family crises finally pull Jerry down from his emotionally distant course. Jerry learns that his family's stability is in jeopardy. His father, Hank, is growing increasingly unhappy in his assisted living facility. His son, Jack, has taken over the family landscaping business but is running it into bankruptcy. His daughter, Theresa, has become pregnant and has been diagnosed with cancer. His longtime girlfriend, Rita, who helped raise his children, has now moved in with another man. And Jerry still has unanswered questions that he must face regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of his late wife. Since the day his wife died, Jerry has turned avoiding conflict into an art form-the perfect expression being his solitary flights from which he can look down on a world that appears serene and unscathed. From his comfortable distance, he can't see the messy details, let alone begin to confront them. But Jerry is learning that in avoiding conflict, he is also avoiding contact with the people he loves most.

Back when he was first learning to fly an airplane, Tom Gompf found himself applying terms from his beloved sport of diving to the maneuvers he was mastering. The line began blurring between the two disciplines, and he realized being a pilot and being a diver had an awful lot in common. Both were forms of flying. Being airborne, aloft, free of the bonds of gravity-that, for Tom, has always been the stuff of life. As an Air Force officer serving in the Vietnam War and a commercial airline pilot for 30 years, Tom knows his way around an airplane. And, as a champion diver who earned the bronze medal in the 10-meter platform diving event at the 1964 Olympics, Tom has found numerous ways to soar physically. A devoted husband, father, friend, and mentor, Tom's ongoing work in support of Olympic divers through endless hours of volunteer service and as the "father of synchronized diving" has certainly left an enduring legacy that's increased opportunities for others to fly, too. In all things, Tom has sought to climb up to the next rung, offering a hand up to those around him as he's crept skyward in his lifelong pursuit of high flight. In "A Life Aloft," Tom reflects back on what he's learned from pushing himself and the sport of diving to ever greater heights.

Publisher Fact Sheet An exploration of the human side of spaceflight: what living & working in space will really be like in the decades to come.

This book takes an innovative approach to one of the great figures of Chinese culture, the writer and painter Wen Zhengming (1470–1559). Renowned as one of the great “scholar painters” of the Ming dynasty, Wen was enmeshed in a complex web of social obligations, his “elegant debts” as he called them, which led to many of his most celebrated works. Using an unprecedented quantity of primary sources for his life and work, Elegant Debts looks at the ways in which social obligation and gift exchange were central to personal and individual identity in the Ming period. The book also examines Wen’s family relationships, his friends, mentors, and pupils, his sense of a distinct local identity, and the interplay of national and regional politics with the achievements of his long life. It uses the insights of a range of scholarship—art history, social and literary history, and anthropology—to show how “self” was constructed in Ming China. In doing so, it makes a major contribution toward a more diverse art history that is less dependent on European conceptions of artists and their work. Craig Clunas has published extensively in the field, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading scholars of Ming culture. Featuring many images of the work of one of China’s major painters, this book is accessible to all who are interested in China’s culture and history, as well as to students and scholars of art history and the history of culture.

This book presents twelve major paintings by masters of the Ming-dynasty (1368-1644), Qing dynasty (1644-1911), and modern periods.