Using his experiences learning the trapeze as a metaphor, best-selling author Sam Keen writes provocatively of overcoming his fears and self-perceived limitations. In learning to let go in life, Keen, a leader in the New Age spirituality community, takes readers on a journey of spiritual enlightenment and fulfilment much as the best-seller Zen and the Art of Archery did.

WITH A NEW EPILOGUE BY THE AUTHOR World-class free climber Steph Davis delivers a “thrilling and infectiously interesting” (San Francisco Book Review) memoir about rediscovering herself through love, loss, and the joy of letting go. The paperback includes a new epilogue in which Davis shares how her husband Mario’s tragic accident has affected her relationship to climbing and flying. Steph Davis is a superstar in the climbing community and has ascended some of the world’s most challenging and awe-inspiring peaks. But after her first husband makes a controversial climb in a national park, the media fallout escalates rapidly and in one fell swoop leaves her without a partner, a career, a source of income...or a purpose. In the company of only her beloved dog, Fletch, Davis sets off on a search for a new identity and discovers skydiving. Falling out of an airplane is completely antithetical to the climber’s control she’d practiced for so long, but she perseveres, turning each daring jump into an opportunity to fly, first as a skydiver, then as a base jumper. As she opens herself to falling, she also finds the strength to open herself to love again, even in the wake of heartbreak. And before too long, she meets someone who shares her passion for living life to the limit. With gorgeous black-and-white photos throughout, Learning to Fly is Davis’s fascinating account of her transformation. From her early tentative skydives, to zipping into her first wingsuit, to surviving devastating accidents against the background of breathtaking cliffs, to soaring beyond her past limits, she discovers new hope and joy in letting go.

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.

Advice for young writers and their parents by an 8-year-old prodigy.Eight-year-old author Adora Svitak is on a campaign to help children discover how creative writing can open the doors of imagination and learning. Flying Fingers combines Adora's historical fiction, adventure stories and poems, writing tips, opinions on politics, religion, media and education with coaching advice for parents and teachers who want to bring out the best in their children by Joyce Svitak. Adora is prolific (writes 200,000 words per year), talented and dedicated to skillfully advancing her writing techniques, themes and vocabulary. How did Adora get so far in such a short amount of time? Flying Fingers attempts to answer that question and inspire children and parents to experience the joy and freedom creative writing.Flying Fingers makes subjects like vocabulary, dialog, plot and editing into child's play and invites kids to use writing as a tool for learning and for influencing the world around them. Adora often appears at schools and libraries with her laptop and projector to demonstrate her writing process live.