Book Review

The Impossible Climb

By Dave English

I was lucky enough to get an advance review copy of a new book coming out in March 2019: The Impossible Climb: A Personal History of Alex Honnolds’s Free Solo of El Capitan and a Climbing Life, by Mark Synnott. It’s pretty dang awesome. Highly recomended. Alex Honnold, the world’s greatest climber, went 3000 feet up shear mountain face, alone with no ropes. An achievement so incredible that the New York Times called it “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever.” And since free solo climbing involves personal high-stakes risk-management at altitude, as pilots we can both … Continue reading The Impossible Climb

Danger and Poetry

By Dave English

“In an environment where everything happens so fast and where mistakes can be fatal, survival ultimately depends on how the pilot chooses to direct and divide his attention. Because of the finite nature of attention, underestimating one’s proficiency at any given task can be just as dangerous as overestimating it. ” It’s the start of December, and I think I’ve now read my favorite new flying book of the year: Danger and Poetry, by Joe Karam (2016, Los Angeles: Soaring West). It’s a short easy 130 pages about the author’s first hundred hours of flying, which were in gliders on the west coast … Continue reading Danger and Poetry

Go beyond happy

By Dave English

Scientifically studying how humans get to be and stay happy is one of modern psychology’s success stories. Positive psychology, with its insights into pleasure and achievement, has benefited millions. But there should be  more to life than happy. And this new powerful book, The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters, by Emily Esfahani Smith (2017), is a gateway to getting there. Moving beyond a happy life to a meaningful life. It’s a very readable story, which considering the serious ground it covers, citing loads of scientific studies as well as ‘heavy hitters’ like Buddha, Kant, Aristotle and Viktor Frankl, is … Continue reading Go beyond happy

Spaceman Mike Massimino

By Dave English

I just finished the great book Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino. (It came out earlier this month, hardcopy, kindle, iBooks.) It’s an easy engaging read, the personal story of his cool travels through colleges, companies, and on to two amazing Hubble rescue missions on the Space Shuttle. Best astronaut book I’ve read in a while. Along the way, ‘Mass’ shares some of the secrets learnt getting a PhD from MIT, learning to be an astronaut, and actually fixing the Hubble telescope in high Earth orbit. Here are some of my … Continue reading Spaceman Mike Massimino

Test pilot airmanship

By Dave English

I finally got around to reading a book that’s been sitting in one of the towering piles on my desk for, maybe months? years? A View From The Hover: My Life in Aviation by British test pilot John Farley. I should have read it sooner. It’s great. An engaging tour of a top test pilot’s professional life, with hard-won flying insights sprinkled in. “Flying is an exercise in risk management.” There are way too many pilot autobiographies that drudge through personal life, lists of planes flown, favorite sandwiches, and generally are not worth reading. This is not the case here. John, … Continue reading Test pilot airmanship