Book Launch: Imagine a City by Mark Vanhoenacker

444 North Street,Pittsfield MA 01201

07 July, 2022

Description

Mark Vanhoenacker, in conversation with Desirae Randisi about his new book, Imagine a City: A Pilot's Journey Across the Urban World."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) "Mark Vanhoenacker is a beautiful, lyrical writer who uses his experience as a pilot to bring us constantly in touch with the transcendent and the otherworldly. Imagine a City is a journey around both the author’s mind and the planet’s great cities that leaves us energised, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives." — Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel "A love letter to the cities he’s returned to again and again...Vanhoenacker captivates when describing the silent beauty of a world glimpsed from above." — Washington Post "Unfailingly interesting, full of empathetic details on faraway places and lives...an absolute pleasure for any world citizen and a trove for any traveler…a sparkling addition to the literature of flight." — Kirkus (starred review) MARK VANHOENACKER is a commercial airline pilot and writer. The author of the international bestseller Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot and How to Land a Plane, he is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and a columnist for the Financial Times. Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he trained as a historian and worked in business before starting his flight training in Britain in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world. The team from the Bookstore in Lenox will be on hand to sell signed copies of Imagine a City and Mark's previous book, Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot.In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere—of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in the places where Mark hoped he could someday be anyone—perhaps even himself. Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of ourplanet and touching down in dozens of the storied cities he imagined as a child. He experiences these destinations during brief stays that he repeats month after month and year after year, giving him an unconventional and uniquely vivid perspective on the places that form our urban world. In this intimate yet expansive work that weaves travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and to love, through the lens of the hometown his heart has never quite left. As he explores emblematic facets of each city’s identity—the road signs of Los Angeles, the old gates of Jeddah, the snowy streets of Sapporo—he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home.