Imagine a City

the same shelf as books by Saint-Exupéry, Markham, and Langewiesche, Vanhoenacker s book is unfailingly interesting, full of empathetic details on faraway places and lives. It s an absolute pleasure for any world citizen and a trove for any traveler. A sparkling addition to the literature of flight. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A memoir wrapped within a scholarly travel book. . . . Dreamy and erudite. . . . A most likeable, warm-hearted narrator with an original world view. The Times (UK)

A century ago, at the dawn of flight, people imagined that writers would want to become pilots, and vice versa, because of the revelations that come with seeing the Earth from above. Mark Vanhoenacker's elegant, engrossing book shows the power of these twinned perspectives, from the skies and up close at ground level. Readers who have not yet traveled with him at the controls of a 787 will be grateful to accompany him on the journeys in these pages. James Fallows, coauthor of Our Towns
 
Mark Vanhoenacker is a long-haul commercial pilot, and his 787 Dreamliner a very apt name takes him to all the cities he dreamed of as a boy in smalltown America (and many more). His perspective--from the cockpit, on the ground, and through the lens of retrospection defies easy comparison: Imagine a coming-of-age memoir and shrewdly picaresque travelogue told by Jules Verne, E,B. White, and Jan Morris rolled into one. There is a moment we all know, head angled against an airplane window at night, when you can see both yourself and what's below. Imagine a City lays claim to that moment. Vanhoenacker's curiosity about the planet and his honesty about himself will leave a permanent mark. Cullen Murphy, editor at large of The Atlantic

An utterly remarkable and original travel book. Like Jan Morris and Pico Iyer, Vanhoenacker weaves memoir and travelogue, using his unusual perch as a pilot to take us on an incredible journey to dozens of cities around the world. Like Italo Calvino, he somehow weaves it all into one, a painfully beautiful cubist city of memory and dreams that rises out of his warm and lyrical prose. Andrew Blum, author of Tubes and The Weather Machine

If the child is the father of the man, then the hometown is like a mother tongue. Mark Vanhoenacker takes us on a journey to major metropolises all over the earth on a quest to find the hidden personal geographies revealed in faraway and unfamiliar parks, cathedrals, marketplaces or seashores. We all carry an invisible city around with us wherever we go, a town of the psyche we re always trying to re-enter or flee. Vanhoenacker regards the lights from 40,000 feet up, and then lands the plane to meet the denizens of his own interior city eye-to-eye. A tour de force of descriptive power and honesty; I can think of no other book like this one. Tom Zoellner, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction 
 
Most of us look at cities from the ground up. But, Mark Vanhoenacker, a pilot, looks at them from above. And his journeys enable him to drop in and visit and revisit cities across the world. His book, Imagine a City provides a unique and much-needed perspective of the cities and the urban world we live in. Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class
 
"An enriching memoir of how a sensitive boy s yearning for escape and acceptance found its fulfilment in the life of an airline pilot . . . A touching survey of human dreams and endeavours and a hymn to the quiet pleasures of returning, in the flesh or in memory, to the intimate geography of one s hometown." Patrick Gale, author of Mother s Boy

"Refreshingly personal and moving . . . This absorbing modern twist on the age-old story of flying the nest, yet yearning for home, will transport you around the globe and back again without leaving your seat." Mark Ovenden, author of Metro Maps of the World