"The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight--a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity--to the realm of the mundane. When most people today think of flying, they imagine tedious routines that involve security checkpoints, exorbitant baggage fees, shrinking legroom, and frustrating delays. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who gave up careers in academia and the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to re-imagine...

Traces the history and development of aircraft from hot-air balloons to jetliners, and includes information on the principles of flight and the inner workings of various flying machines.

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.

Follows the lives of the Wright brothers and describes how they developed the first airplane.

Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them from their white counterparts despite their groundbreaking successes.

"An accessible introduction to black holes: what they are, how they form, and how scientists find them. This expanded edition includes updated facts and a new chapter on the first-ever photograph of a black hole"--

"When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women. Eventually, though, NASA opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls. From a candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected in 1978--Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. Together, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her...

Describes the nature of the sun, its origin, source of energy, layers, atmosphere, sunspots, and activity.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Keith...

Depicts the 1969 Apollo 11 mission when man first walked on the moon.