Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution
- Length: 304 pages
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- Publisher: Apollo
- Publication Date: 2022-05-01
- ISBN-10: 1838937854
- ISBN-13: 9781838937850
- Sales Rank: #19324 (See Top 100 Books)
The Wonder of Flight. The Science of Evolution. From both, Richard Dawkins weaves a fascinating and beautifully illustrated account of how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies.
Do you sometimes dream you can fly like a bird? Gliding effortlessly above the treetops, soaring and swooping, playing and dodging through the third dimension. Computer games, virtual reality headsets, and some drugs can lift our imagination and fly us through fabled, magical spaces. But it’s not the real thing. No wonder some of the past’s greatest minds, including Leonardo da Vinci’s, have yearned for flying machines and struggled to design them.
Flights of Fancy is a book about flying – all the different ways of defying gravity that have been discovered by humans over the centuries and by other animals over the millions of years, from the mythical Icarus, to the sadly extinct but magnificent bird Argentavis magnificens, to the Wright Flyer and the 747. But it also means flights of digression into more general ideas and principles that take off from a discussion about actual flight.
Fascinating and elegantly written, this is a unique collaboration between one of the world’s leading zoologists and a talented artist, and perfect for enquiring teenage minds.
Cover Also by Richard Dawkins Title Page Copyright Dedication Table of Contents CHAPTER 1: DREAMS OF FLYING CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS FLIGHT GOOD FOR? CHAPTER 3: IF FLYING IS SO GREAT, WHY DO SOME ANIMALS LOSE THEIR WINGS? CHAPTER 4: FLYING IS EASY IF YOU ARE SMALL CHAPTER 5: IF YOU MUST BE LARGE AND FLY, INCREASE YOUR SURFACE AREA OUT OF PROPORTION CHAPTER 6: UNPOWERED FLIGHT: PARACHUTING AND GLIDING CHAPTER 7: POWERED FLIGHT AND HOW IT WORKS CHAPTER 8: POWERED FLIGHT IN ANIMALS CHAPTER 9: BE LIGHTER THAN AIR CHAPTER 10: WEIGHTLESSNESS CHAPTER 11: AERIAL PLANKTON CHAPTER 12: ‘WINGS' FOR PLANTS CHAPTER 13: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EVOLVED AND DESIGNED FLYING MACHINES CHAPTER 14: WHAT IS THE USE OF HALF A WING? CHAPTER 15: THE OUTWARD URGE: BEYOND FLYING About the Author RICHARD DAWKINS About the Illustrator JANA LENZOVÁ Acknowledgements An Invitation from the Publisher
Donate to keep this site alive
1. Disable the AdBlock plugin. Otherwise, you may not get any links.
2. Solve the CAPTCHA.
3. Click download link.
4. Lead to download server to download.