24 Books Like Flight Not Improbable

I was living in Madrid, Spain, when one of my friends and fellow English-language teachers, Heather, nudged me and said, “James, you have to read this.”

I was in my “James only reads highbrow literature” era, so I told her that the cover looked too pulpy (yes, I was guilty of judging a book by its cover). Thankfully, my respect for Heather forced me to overlook my biases and give Pillars a shot. I’m so glad I did.

The prose style is simple and accessible (obeying Animal Farm author George Orwell’s advice to write prose as transparent as a “windowpane”). And that’s good, because the content draws you in completely.

A village in Medieval England decides to build a cathedral. The characters range from evil knights to noble monks to savvy businesswomen to scheming clerics. The world is rich with detail and the pages are addicting, almost turning themselves. It’s… show more.

This book is one of the most haunting accounts of war I've ever read. Through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, Remarque immerses you in the horrific realities of World War I. The sheer brutality of trench warfare, the disillusionment with nationalism, and the emotional devastation of losing comrades all play out in a way that feels as immediate now as it must have been when the book was first published. My grandfather fought in the First World War, and though he never spoke about it, I believe the emotional scars he carried shaped who he became. All Quiet makes me think about how those invisible wounds persist today—worldwide. War may evolve regarding weapons and strategies, but the psychological impact is chillingly consistent.

This novel isn’t just about the battlefield. It’s about the inner lives of soldiers and the way war corrupts not just bodies but minds,… show more.

I was thrilled and partly moved to tears when reading about the human side of the Wright brothers' story, including the little-known contributions of their sister Katharine, without whom things might well have turned out differently for them.

The two mechanics from Dayton were men of extraordinary courage and determination, with wide-ranging intellectual interests and an insatiable curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing.

That they had no more than a public high school education, little money, and no contacts in high places never stopped them in their "mission" to take to the air. Nothing did, not even that they risked being killed every time they took off.

What drew me to it was the fascinating interaction between the main character and his physician tutors as he learned how to become a healer from some of the most talented scientific minds of the time.

There are so few books about the early Middle Ages that are a) not horrendously violent, and b) not about the English battling someone, that I found this perspective, about a young man who travels on foot to Persia in disguise, to be refreshing.

It’s a long, satisfying read and the first in a trilogy. This book is really popular in Spain and was even made into a movie and a stage show!

This non-fiction book about Emma Lilian Todd by Kirsten Williams Larson and illustrated by Tracy Subisak offers an inspiring story about a woman engineer inventing an airplane. The story and illustrations do a fantastic job of showing the real-world process of design thinking, with research and failures along the way. I love the themes of perseverance and the important message that great inventions build upon one another.

From the time he was young, Edward White loved outer space and dreamed of traveling there. In simple poetic language, this book tells how Edward’s life led him to serve in the U.S. Air Force and ultimately in the NASA program, where he became the first American to walk in space. Nonetheless, the book emphasizes that while he was always reluctant to stop doing anything related to outer space, he was eager to return from his journey to spend time with his greatest treasure of all—his family! Back matter gives more details about White’s life and a timeline of his accomplishments.

I expected a book of insider stories about the hidden world of commercial airline travel from the people who make it possible, but instead I found a beautifully written, lyrical, and awestruck look at what it means to travel high above the Earth’s surface day after day, zooming between cities on opposite sides of the world.

I have never had the physics of flight, gravitational pull, wind, storms, and clouds explained so clearly and compellingly. I frequently reread passages for their beauty and emotion and completely unique fresh perspective. I knew flying was a sophisticated skill, but this book made it clear how truly complex a pilot’s job is.

The author’s love of his hard-won occupation is enthralling, making this a book to share with aspiring aviators in your life.  

As the title suggests, an engineer’s biography. But Nevil Shute was more than an engineer. He was an entrepreneur, starting his own aircraft manufacturing company, and a famous novelist, still in print today. But Slide Rule remains for me his masterwork, describing as it does the design and building of airships in the 1930s. 

It is a fascinating book about a technology that no longer exists. The design challenge was in creating a vehicle that, although made of metal, had to float in the air. This was achieved by making it very big, displacing the air inside it with a lighter-than-air gas, so that it could lift those pieces which had to be made of metal as well as a payload of persons or freight.

The design challenges were awesome. The metal parts, particularly the huge metal rings that formed the outline of the ship, had to be optimised for… show more.

This oversized coffee-table book is an archival treasure trove: a collection of primary source materials—contemporary articles, letters, broadsheets, and other rare material—arranged chronologically and packed with line drawings and spectacular full-color plates. The author lets the painstakingly harvested entries speak for themselves, with little comment or imposed context beyond the archival images, and the result is a rich tribute to the art of ballooning and its practitioners. Beautifully curated and visually dazzling, this is a browser’s delight.

I could not think of a more suspenseful tale involving flight than this story. I wanted the pilot to make it home to England and read with my heart in my mouth how everything began to go wrong for him until the mysterious World War II bomber appeared–as either friend or enemy.

His characterizations are vividly drawn, as are the descriptions of the aircraft. This is one of Forsyth’s best books, in my opinion, and I like them all.