Rating: 
Summary: Awesome Book for Anyone Who Truly Loves to Fly
Review: This is the first thing I've read by William Langewiesche. The closer you are to aviation, I believe, the more you will like it. As a pilot for 30 years, Langewiesche writes what I would, if I had his incredible ability with words. He captures so much of what how flying changes those who pursue it as their passion. Some other reviewers suggest he rambles a bit, but I felt everything was connected and after all, the subtitle is "Meditations on Flight". I can't overstate how much I enjoyed this book. Flying is so much more that just piloting an airplane through the sky and Langewieche captures all this better than anyone else I've ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthy reading
Review: This lyrical collection of essays by an accomplished airman illuminates the pilot's soul as much as his environment. The essays on "The Turn" and the Air-India disaster are masterworks, not because they apply to the JFK Jr. tragedy but rather because they speak to the ever-changing relationship between pilots and their sky. The reader should not be discouraged by the first essay in the volume, a meditation on perspective which probably is better read last. Rather, skip to others and absorb how the author's adopted home--the sky--has enveloped his predecessors, his contemporaries and himself. Other reviewers have compared William to his father, Wolfgang Langewiesche. The comparison is unfair to both men. "Inside the Sky" is no more a manual of flight than "Stick and Rudder" is a meditation on the topic. Readers, airmen or not, are the richer for the writings of father and son.
Rating: 
Summary: Inside the Dangerous Sky
Review: With the subtitle "Meditations on Flight," this promised to be a thoughtful look at the wonder of flight, or something along those lines. As a reader of Atlantic Monthly for many years, I knew that William Langewiesche had been writing articles for them about aviation. I remembered one article especially, Slam and Jam, about air traffic control, that I read when it first appeared in the magazine in 1997. I was an air traffic controller at the time and read the entire piece with great interest, remarking to colleagues that I thought it was quite a well-balanced look at the conflict between union and management. My colleagues disagreed. Six years later, and four years after I left air traffic control, I reread the article which appears as one of the seven chapters in Inside the Sky. This time around, the article didn't seem quite as even-handed to me. While Langewiesche doesn't seem to find either management or the union admirable, he really does a number on the controllers, belittling the work they do. I could go on about Slam and Jam, but I really don't imagine that anyone outside the business of commercial flight would be interested in it in any case. If I hadn't had a professional interest in the subject, I doubt I would have read the article at all. There are two chapters devoted to air crashes. Even as someone who has more than an average interest in aviation, I do not care to dwell on air crashes and other disasters. I read them when they first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, and did not feel compelled to read them again. It seems that Langewiesche has made a second career (after a career as a pilot) of examining crashes and other disasters, which is a shame. Important as it is to understand the causes of air crashes, so that they may be avoided in the future, I wonder how necessary it is to wallow in disaster page after page for, let's face it, entertainment. One chapter that lives up to the promise of the subtitle and that I found worth rereading was The Turn, about the physics of flight from a passenger's point of view. This is the sort of article that makes me remember how much I enjoy flying (as a passenger) and how I hate it when the flight attendant asks me to lower the shade so that others may enjoy the movie. The show outside is much better.
Rating:
Summary: Inside the Dangerous Sky
Review: With the subtitle "Meditations on Flight," this promised to be a thoughtful look at the wonder of flight, or something along those lines. As a reader of Atlantic Monthly for many years, I knew that William Langewiesche had been writing articles for them about aviation. I remembered one article especially, Slam and Jam, about air traffic control, that I read when it first appeared in the magazine in 1997. I was an air traffic controller at the time and read the entire piece with great interest, remarking to colleagues that I thought it was quite a well-balanced look at the conflict between union and management. My colleagues disagreed. Six years later, and four years after I left air traffic control, I reread the article which appears as one of the seven chapters in Inside the Sky. This time around, the article didn't seem quite as even-handed to me. While Langewiesche doesn't seem to find either management or the union admirable, he really does a number on the controllers, belittling the work they do. I could go on about Slam and Jam, but I really don't imagine that anyone outside the business of commercial flight would be interested in it in any case. If I hadn't had a professional interest in the subject, I doubt I would have read the article at all. There are two chapters devoted to air crashes. Even as someone who has more than an average interest in aviation, I do not care to dwell on air crashes and other disasters. I read them when they first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, and did not feel compelled to read them again. It seems that Langewiesche has made a second career (after a career as a pilot) of examining crashes and other disasters, which is a shame. Important as it is to understand the causes of air crashes, so that they may be avoided in the future, I wonder how necessary it is to wallow in disaster page after page for, let's face it, entertainment. One chapter that lives up to the promise of the subtitle and that I found worth rereading was The Turn, about the physics of flight from a passenger's point of view. This is the sort of article that makes me remember how much I enjoy flying (as a passenger) and how I hate it when the flight attendant asks me to lower the shade so that others may enjoy the movie. The show outside is much better.
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