Fly by Wire The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson [Paperback]

InFly by Wire, one of America's greatest journalists takes us on a fascinating (The New York Times) and sometimes humorous journey into the rapidly changing aviation industry. Langewiesche concisely and artfully renders forty years of history in the field by examining the financial problems, the unions, and ultimately the recent advances in technology. And he finds that aviation safety is field in which machine has now surpassed man, but man still manages to find ways -- hubris, ineptitude -- to cause accidents. Advances such as fly by wire suggest that in some cases it may prove best to cede authority to the machines, even if it means questioning our assumptions about human beings and heroism in the process.

William Langewiesche is the author of six previous books:Cutting for Sign,SaharaUnveiled,Inside the Sky,American Ground(North Point Press, 2002),The Outlaw Sea(North Point Press, 2004), and, most recently,The Atomic Bazaar(FSG, 2007). He is the international editor forVanity Fair.

If you think you know the story of Chesley Sullenberger's miraculous ditching of US Airways flight 1549 from the major media coverage, think again. In this short, tightly written yet expansive book,Vanity Faircorrespondent Langewiesche (The Atomic Bazaar) weaves a page-turning narrative of the ill-fated, three-minute flight, crippled by a bird strike, with several finely honed elements of backstory (the day-to-day lives of airline personnel including Capt. Sully Sullenberger and his crew, an errant flock of geese, and a controversial French-built airplane) into a masterpiece of modern journalism. While most media coverage of the event has focused on Sullenberger's heroic actions, dubbing it the Miracle on the Hudson, Langewiesche eschews such hyperbole and explores every detail of the day's fateful events. Sullenberger and his copilot, Jeffrey Skiles, do come off as heroic, but molc*