I am very grateful to my colleagues and my instructors, far too numerous to name here, who over the years have shared their insights and experience with me, and who have answered my questions and pointed me to better ones, and who, day in and day out, make the job so rewarding.
I am also very grateful to my London-based editor, Katy Follain, for all her kind guidance throughout this project; to her colleagues Natasha Hodgson, Charlotte Fry, Georgina Difford, Melanie Thompson, Elizabeth Masters, and Olivia Mead; to my agents, Caroline Michel and Tessa David of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop; and to Amber Anderson, without whose wonderful illustrations it would be all but impossible to share many of the things I find most fascinating about flight. I would also like to express my gratitude to Matthew Lore, Liana Willis, Jennifer Hergenroeder, Ashley Yepsen, Beth Bugler, Zachary Pace, Sarah Schneider, and their colleagues, for all their enthusiasm, encouragement, and diligence as they worked to bring this book to an American audience.
This book also benefitted enormously from family members, friends, and more or less perfect strangers who responded kindly when I reached out for help. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Mark R. Jones, Kirun Kapur, Steven Hillion, Andrew Blum, Tony Cane, Lindsay Craig, Robert Goyer, Terry Kraus, Mac McClellan, Harriet Powney, Lizzie Seetharaman, Sebastien Stouffs, and Tom Zoellner.
For technical assistance I am particularly grateful to two kind former colleagues, Alex Fisher and Philip Hogge; to the fighter pilot, test pilot, and airline pilot, Chris Habig; to the writer and pilot-of-all-trades, Bill Cox; to Mark Feuerstein; to a former instructor, Steve Rees, from whom I expect I will always have a great deal to learn; and to Jennifer Inman and Matthew Inman, who once again offered me warmhearted advice and brilliant technical feedback. It was Jennifer’s idea to include a second, more detailed version of the “four forces” diagram, and Figure 5 is based on a drawing that she made for me.
Any errors of fact or interpretation are, of course, my responsibility entirely.