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texassizedreads's review
The fact that I didn't finish this is a me thing. I have trouble reading nonfiction books, even on topics I'm very interested in. I am planning on getting the audio book to read along with.
resolutereader's review
2.0
Holmes' earlier book, The Age of Wonder was a masterful history of the era when science and literature were holding out for a new world, where technology might free human kind. It explored the scientists and their circles striving to understand the cosmos. Falling Upwards covers a similar subject and period, but sadly I found it didn't really hold together as a book and came across as a series of anecdotes not worthy of the book's subtitle, however fascinating they might be.
Complete review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/richard-holmes-falling-upwards-how-we.html
Complete review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/richard-holmes-falling-upwards-how-we.html
hilaritas's review
5.0
I've always felt there's something almost subconsciously fascinating and terrifying about the symbolism of a hot-air balloon. Holmes clearly feels the same and has written a book about the human yearning for discovery through the story of 18th and 19th century ballooning. Like Holmes' "The Age of Wonder", the book is largely structured as a series of biographical vignettes and accounts of famous events through the lens of his chosen topic. I found that approach greatly sharpened in this book (and I really liked The Age of Wonder), as you get a deeply incisive but also narrowly focused view into the attitudes that shaped a period of explosive scientific and humanistic growth through a seemingly insignificant fringe technology. Many of the anecdotes Holmes recounts are funny, some are uplifting (ha), some are tragic, and the account of the polar expedition that closes the book is a truly harrowing account of existential horror. Good god, is it haunting. Anyone who is interested in the history of science and technology, Georgian and Victorian society and entertainments, women's contributions to science and spectacle, adventure stories, or feeling a vertiginous sense of tiny, striving man (and woman) in the face of the unimaginable vastness of nature, this book is for you. Many people have laughed when I told them I was reading a history of ballooning, but this book is about much, much more.
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