William Langewiesche (1955–2025)

William Langewiesche's life has been deeply intertwined with the idea and act of flying. Fifty years ago his father, a test pilot, wrote Stick and Rudder. Inside The Sky is a collection of seven engaging essays on the phenomenon of human flight, from Otto Lilienthal's early experiences to the interesting and dramatic but rather unimportant effects of turbulence, to the high-tension boredom of air-traffic control. In each chapter, Langewiesche easily maintains his aura of reverence and awe at show more the mere fact of flight; although most people will have flown at least once in their lives, and many will have ceased to be amazed long ago, Langewiesche's zeal at merely seeing so far from so high might just shame them. Of course, Inside The Sky serves as an incisive commentary on the human experience of and attitude toward flight. What sets the book above a mere exploration of a mechanical phenomenon is the simple human joy it expresses; it's at once a celebration of human flight and a condemnation of jaded humanity.
William Langewiesche, a former national correspondent for The Atlantic and a professional pilot, has written about subjects including aviation, national security, and North Africa. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/william-langewiesche/ show less

This book—really a collection of essays—reveals the world’s oceans in all their terrible power and lawlessness, despite nation-state efforts to subdue or at least effectively manage them. Langewiesche brings an immaculate reporter’s detail to these accounts, and adds a storytelling flair that made this book a quick, enjoyable read for me.

I’ve long been fascinated by the immense majesty of earth’s oceans, and the ships and stories its waters have borne across time. Even as modern show more technology has brought some mastery to man’s seafaring ways, the sea remains unconquerable. The world’s oceans do not yield to man in the same way that the elements do on land.

The first account is a primer on the international shipping regime and the efforts by nations and their navies to better manage its complexities and dangers. How does a country protect its coasts and ports? How does it manage the personnel and cargo coming and going in such unmanageable numbers and ways?

The shipping industry is largely an uncontainable shell game of multi-national, trans-national, and extra-national operators, moving furtively in the shadows and enormity of the space in pursuit of slim profits. Piracy is real, and large container ships are not immune. In a second story, Langewiesche tells the story of one such hijacking in Southeast Asia.

In a third and final story, we learn about the Indian ship breakers with welding torches who speed up the decomposition of decommissioned ships on the backs of poor laborers (who prefer this work over abject poverty) on the beaches of India in the face of international campaigns to stop them. The reality of this work is more complex than Greenpeace would suggest.

Langewiesche’s books have a poetic realism to them, where facts and characters are grittier than fiction. For those who love the mysteries of the ocean, and who want an introduction to the complexities and hazards of the global shipping industry, this is a fluid, eye-opening primer.

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I found this book in Pioneer Bookstore in Provo, Utah after enjoying the author’s book Sahara Unveiled a few years ago. show less

Subtitle notwithstanding, this is less a meditation on flight than a collection of articles about it. The articles vary in subject matter, tone, and--to be honest--success. Langewiesche, a regular contributor to Atlantic Monthly, is at his best when he's writing in journalistic mode. His dissection of why a veteran Air India captain flew his plane into the sea is fascinating, and his use of the ValuJet 592 crash in the Everglades (which becomes a meditation on the risks involved in flying) show more is even better. Oddly, the least successful segments are the most personal, reflective ones. The son of a flier who literally "wrote the book" on stick-and-rudder skills and a pilot himself since childhood, Langewiesche frequently calls attention to the distinction between "us pilots" vs. "you non-pilots." Other pilot authors--Antoine de St. Exupery, Ernest K. Gann, Richard Bach--have done the same, but as a prelude to saying "let me tell you about my world." Langewiesche is less welcoming. He insists so strongly, and so often, on the distinction that the effect is distancing and, for me, ultimately off-putting.

There is much in this book to interest readers, pilots or not, who love flying. Individual parts are better than the whole, however, and the whole falls well short of aviation classics like Wind, Sand, and Stars, Fate is the Hunter or Nothing By Chance. show less

Langewiesche knows his audience will have already heard about Cactus 1549, so he begins obliquely with what New Yorkers would have seen of the ditching that day, and then he builds up the picture with the public National Transportation Safety Board meeting six months afterward. He describes the copilot, Jeffrey Skiles’ and Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s first meeting and the several days of flights leading up to the flight from La Guardia. On the way he gives us a picture of show more Sullenberger, a decent man and not a publicity seeker, but one who recognized that events had given him a chance to make his family financially secure. The necessity for doing so comes about, Langewiesche argues, from the 40 to 50 per cent cuts airline pilots had taken to their salaries as the airlines tried to survive the 2000 recession, the attacks of 9-11, and their own executives’ incompetence. Many pilots, including Skiles, had taken second jobs or , like Sullenberger, were doing consulting work.
Langewiesche goes back to a moment-by-moment account of the bird strike and its aftermath, digressing to discuss the flying habits of geese, the construction and operation of turbofan engines, the gliding capabilities of large aircraft, and, most important, the development of the Airbus fly-by-wire design, beginning with the efforts of test pilot and engineer Bernard Ziegler that resulted in the production of the first A320 Airbus in 1983.
The A320 is designed to prevent a pilot from stalling the airplane or subjecting it to G-forces beyond its capabilities. The design was resisted by pilots and continues to be resisted, but it probably helped Sullenberger accomplish his almost perfect glide onto the Hudson. Sullenberger had turned on the auxiliary power unit almost immediately after the engines lost power, and so the airplane continued to help him keep the wings level and the nose at the best attitude. Langewiesche gives Sullenberger full credit for his skill and his concentration as well as his judgment in deciding not to attempt to return to La Guardia, but he also thinks the airplane played a part in the favorable outcome.
Langewiesche is a pilot himself as well as a very good writer, and he tells the story methodically and convincingly. Having written before about the very many ways pilots can be deceived, distracted, and self-deluded in their flying, he clearly takes sides with the manufacturer who has designed a system to keep them from making tragic errors, and he is happy to be writing about a happy result.
My favorite quote: “The wonder now is not that our species flies, but that we waited so long to do it. Airplanes are such elegant and simple devices that in their basic form they seem less to have been invented than discovered.” show less