Featuring soft acrylic brush strokes, this collection of beautiful illustrations and thoughtful text depict an adorable, newly born bird going through life stages. Short and simple but full of profound thoughts, this resource pairs art and advice such as the image of the young bird falling down and breaking open its shell with "Falling down can help us free ourselves from the superfluous" and the portrayal of the baby fowl attempting to use a grown bird's discarded feathers to fly with "Borrowing someone else's equipment won't improve your own abilities." Without being a doctrine on how to live life, this tiny gift book offers sincere and touching guidelines for both the young and the young at heart.

Retold Afro-American folktales of animals, fantasy, the supernatural, and desire for freedom, born of the sorrow of the slaves, but passed on in hope.

A poetic and nuanced exploration of the human experience of flight that reminds us of the full imaginative weight of our most ordinary journeys—and reawakens our capacity to be amazed. The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight—a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity—to the realm of the mundane. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to reimagine what we—both as pilots and as passengers—are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity that affords us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.

"A lively, unexpected portrait of the jet-age stewardesses serving on iconic Pan Am airways between 1966 and 1975"--

From the creators of Dragons Love Tacos comes the third off-the-wall comedy featuring Old Man Fookwire, a lot of birds, and those darn squirrels. Old Man Fookwire's one pleasure in life is painting the birds in his backyard. When fall arrives and the birds fly south, Fookwire is desolate. The squirrels are curious: Where are the birds going, and what do they do once they get there? With their usual ingenuity and engineering skills, the squirrels devise a way to follow the birds to their destination, a tropical paradise. A wonderful time is had by all—all but grumpy Old Man Fookwire, alone at home. But the squirrels have a solution for that, too. Readers will revel in this third off-the-wall comedy featuring Old Man Fookwire, a lot of birds, and those darn squirrels.

From the bestselling author of Saban, 4th and Goal, and Sowbelly comes the thrilling, untold story of the quest for the world record tarpon on a fly rod—a tale that reveals as much about Man as it does about the fish. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, something unique happened in the quiet little town on the west coast of Florida known as Homosassa. The best fly anglers in the world—Lefty Kreh, Stu Apte, Ted Williams, Tom Evans, Billy Pate and others—all gathered together to chase the same Holy Grail: The world record for the world’s most glamorous and sought-after fly rod species, the tarpon. The anglers would meet each morning for breakfast. They would compete out on the water during the day, eat dinner together at night, socialize and party. Some harder than others. The world record fell nearly every year. But records weren’t the only things that were broken. Hooks, lines, rods, reels, hearts and marriages didn’t survive, either. The egos involved made the atmosphere electric. The difficulty of the quest made it legitimate. The drugs and romantic entaglements that were swept in with the tide would finally make it all veer out of control. It was a confluence of people and place that had never happened before in the world of fishing and will never happen again. It was a collision of the top anglers and the top species of fish which would lead to smashed lives for nearly all involved, man and fish alike. In Lords of the Fly, Burke, an obsessed tarpon fly angler himself, delves into this incredible moment. He examines the growing popularity of the tarpon, an amazing fish has been around for 50 million years, can live to 80 years old and can grow to 300 pounds in weight. It is a massive, leaping, bullet train of a fish. When hooked in shallow water, it produces “immediate unreality,” as the late poet and tarpon obsessive, Richard Brautigan, once described it. Burke also chronicles the heartbreaking destruction that exists as a result—brought on by greed, environmental degradation and the shenanigans of a notorious Miami gangster—and how all of it has shaped our contemporary fishery. Filled with larger-than-life characters and vivid prose, Lords of the Fly is not only a must read for anglers of all stripes, but also for those interested in the desperate yearning of the human condition.

For hundreds of years people have wanted to fly. Countless tried and failed, but now flying is very common. Read and find out about the many obstacles that have been overcome so planes and people can soar through the sky.