In addition to those I thank in the individual chapter notes, I would like to express my gratitude as follows.
I wish to offer my deepest thanks to my editors, Dan Frank and Tom Pold of Knopf, and Clara Farmer of Chatto & Windus, for their constant encouragement, warm support, and wise guidance throughout the long process that led to this book. Dan Frank passed away in May 2021; I know that I am only one of the many writers, readers, and colleagues who owe Dan so much, and deeply miss him. Thank you, too, to Charlotte Humphery, for all her careful work on this book. Thank you to my copy editor, Karen Thompson, for her seemingly endless attention to detail, and to Tyler Comrie, Anna Knighton, and Peggy Samedi for their skillful work on this book’s design and production. And thank you, of course, to my publicist, Kathy Zuckerman, and her marketing colleagues Amy Hagedorn and Sara Eagle, for all their help in bringing this book to the attention of readers.
I would also like to extend my warm gratitude to my agent, Caroline Michel of Peters Fraser and Dunlop, for reaching out to me so many years ago. I am so grateful for her help, and that of her colleague, Tim Binding, in guiding and shaping this book. Thank you also to their colleagues Rebecca Wearmouth, Kim Meridja, Rose Brown, and Laurie Robertson. Thank you to the amazing Harriet Powney, for her occasionally ruthless suggestions, for her efforts to teach me that less is often more, and for coining (and so effectively wielding) the term “a fact too far.” Thank you also to the sharp-eyed Hilary McClellen for her assistance with meticulously checking those facts I couldn’t bear to cut, and for so gently bringing, for example, the differences between a rhea and an ostrich to my attention. And thank you to everyone in Pittsfield and the Berkshires who helped me—in particular Ann-Marie Harris of the Berkshire Athenaeum and Erin Hunt of the Berkshire County Historical Society, together with their colleagues.
Thank you to my fellow AP211ers—Jez, Bomber, Seb, Cat, Neil, DAVE!, Adrian, Adam, Kirsten, Chris, Balbir, Lindsay Boy, Lindsay Girl, Mo, Hailey, Carwyn, and James—for friendships that have now lasted two decades across our ever-growing list of ranks and aircraft types. Thank you also to my colleagues Allister Bridger and Anthony Cane for their kindness and support with this latest of my writing projects. I’m deeply grateful to all my flight crew, cabin crew, and ground-based colleagues for making my job so enjoyable, whether in London, on the flight deck, or in the streets of the cities that form our down-route world. It seems that every pilot, when they retire, says that the best thing, after all, was the people; I’m certain that when the time comes—and despite my deep love for both flying and cities—I will agree.
Thank you to Anjali, Lola, and Silas; and to Sophie, for reminding me of how exciting it can be to write. Thank you to Drew Tagliabue and Peter Catapano for their sensitive and enormously useful advice at times when I was uncertain about this book’s direction. Thank you also to Seeta Seetharaman, Helen Yanacopulos, Eleanor O’Keeffe, Jamie Cash, Thellea Leveque, Jim Ciullo, Jordan Tircuit, Meredith Howard, Wako Tawa, George Greenstein, Adrian Campbell-Smith, Julian Barratt, Zareer Dadachanji, Jason Vanhoenacker, Anika Vanhoenacker, and Nancy Vanhoenacker; and, of course, to Rich and to Cindy and Dan.
A number of family members, friends, and correspondents spent many hours reading drafts of the book over the last three or so years, often in their entirety, and it really is impossible to thank them adequately for the time they so kindly offered, and the great care they took. Thank you to Steven Hillion, for all his keen intelligence and frank but warmly offered advice on city and book matters both small and large; to Alec MacGillis, an old friend and fellow Pittsfielder, for the time and attention he found for this text at what was already an extraordinarily busy time for him; and to Tom Zoellner, for his thoughtfulness as we discussed cities, both real and imagined, on our walks in Los Angeles. Thank you also to Desirae Randisi, for sharing my love of cities, and giving her thoughts on how to write about them; to Alain de Botton, for his generosity and for his brilliant and inspiring books; to Leo Mirani, for his help and for a friendship that started, appropriately, at Heathrow; and to Sebastien Stouffs, for his careful reading from the perspective of both a pilot and a friend. And thank you to Kirun Kapur, who gave so much as she helped to guide this book—from one draft to the next and then the next and the next—as she has helped to guide my writing from the beginning. I am so grateful for our friendship, and our journeys together.
I’d like to close by expressing my love and gratitude to my parents; to Jason, Lois, and Nancy; and to Kathleen, Sue, and everyone else in our Berkshire family, who have always been one of the greatest blessings of my life. And thank you, above all, to Mark: for so much joy, for giving me such encouragement and wise advice with the writing of these words, and for helping me home.