There are few times when science is so immediate as when you're in a plane, entrusting your safety to the scientists and engineers who enable tons of metal and plastic to hurtle through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. In this singular conveyance you can experience the impact of relativity, the power of natural radiation, and the effect of altitude on the boiling point of tea. Brian Clegg explains the ever changing view through the window—whether looking at mountains or clouds, crop circles or river deltas—and describes simple experiments to show how a wing provides lift or why you should never try to open a door in midair. The author of Light Years, Build Your Own Time Machine, and The Universe Inside You, as well as the editor of Britain's online Popular Science magazine, Clegg specializes in making the strangest aspects of the cosmos entertaining and accessible for the general reader.

"We should be grateful for this book from Brian Clegg, an unabashed aircraft geek. Everything about aircraft seems to fascinate him: how much they weigh, how their lavatories work, how they affect our bodies. His curiosity extends to airports, which he turns into pleasure palaces full of little-known facts rather than the dull shopping malls we normally take them to be. His book is structured as a representative flight, from check-in to customs, in which at every turn he micro-analyses the technical and scientific aspects of the experience. I consider myself reasonably competent on matters aeronautical, but he still managed to surprise me with something new on every page."—Mail on Sunday (London)