Around the World in 20 Days : The Story of Our History-Making Balloon Flight [Hardcover]

Bertrand Piccard (Author), Brian Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 11, 1999

The Story of the First-Ever Round-the-World Balloon Flight As Told by the Pilots "Both of us were being driven on by a colossal charge of hope, which sometimes became so strong that we had to take deep breaths and physically choke it down. The important thing, now, was to concentrate and not make any mistakes." — Brian Jones, March 4, flying over the Sahara Desert "This is exactly my definition of adventure…a point at which you cannot avoid confronting the unknown, so that you have to dig inside yourself to find the courage and resources to deal with what may lie ahead, and to succeed." — Bertrand Piccard, diary entry March 10, heading out over the Pacific

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the 9th of March, 1999, eight days into their flight, Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard were approaching Myanmar's air space. They had the following exchange with an air-traffic controller:

Air traffic control: Hotel Bravo-Bravo Romeo Alpha, what is your departure point and destination?

Brian Jones: Departure point, Château d'Oex, Switzerland. Destination, somewhere in northern Africa.

Air traffic control, after several seconds' silence: If you're going from Switzerland to northern Africa, what in hell are you doing in Myanmar?

Twelve days later the Breitling Orbiter 3 made a hard but safe landing in the Egyptian desert. Their successful circumnavigation, the first, put Piccard and Jones into the record books for distance (25,361 miles) and duration (477.47 hours aloft). Around the World in 20 Days tells the story of their flight, and the obstacles--both natural and manmade--they had to overcome. Struggling to get the balloon back into the jet stream when they had strayed too far south was one thing, but negotiating with dozens of countries for the right to fly in their air space was just as challenging. Even choosing a landing site was problematic: "Mali is mainly desert, and has lions, leopards etc.," while the Nigerians were hesitant, the Libyans wouldn't allow rescue planes to be brought in, and Egypt gave the balloon permission to overfly its borders but not to land. On the ground, the team's support system spelled out the situation to the Egyptians: "Listen--the balloon is running out of fuel. If the pilot doesn't have permission to land, he'll have to declare a full emergency, and you'll be obliged by the international rules to deal with it." The Egyptian controller replied, "In that case, I give you permission."

Readers looking for edge-of-their-seats adventure may be disappointed; the authors tend to downplay the amount of danger they were often in. Indeed, the good humor in the cramped gondola camouflaged much of the scrambling taking place on the ground as the support crews worked to ensure the safety of the pilots. Sometimes the narrative, told in alternating passages by Piccard and Jones, descends into technical detail about flight levels, wind speeds, and directions. ("The required flight level will be between 260 and 280, with tracks between 093 and 098, and speed around 35 knots until 00:00 Z.") More often, however, the book glides along as smoothly as these two men who, in Piccard's words, "took off as pilots, flew as friends, and landed as brothers." --Sunny Delaney

From Publishers Weekly

For 20 days in March 1999, Piccard and Jones tempted fate, the jet stream and countless surly, foreign air-traffic controllers in a successful attempt to be the first to float a giant balloon nonstop around the world. Hyped as aviation's last great challenge and fueled by a million-dollar purse from Budweiser, the quest attracted the attention of millionaires such as Richard Branson of Virgin and David Liniger of Re/Max International. But Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist, brought an adventurous pedigree as well as deep pockets to the undertaking: his grandfather was the first person to reach the stratosphere in a balloon, and his father set the record for the deepest dive in a submarine. Piccard and Jones, the project manager, take turns telling the story of their flight from Switzerland to Egypt the hard way. If the notion of flying around the world in a balloon has a romantic allure, the day-to-day reality consisted primarily of pirouetting slowly at the behest of the wind while remaining in constant contact with mission control on flight speed and ideal altitude. Technical problems cropped up, and readers will sympathize with the fear of flying an uncharted path across 8000 miles of Pacific Ocean. But mostly the crew in the cramped, often freezing gondola seems to have been closer to being severely inconvenienced than to being harmed. This may be a reflection on the thoroughness of their team's planning and skill, but it makes for some surprisingly dull reading. 24 pages of photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471378208
• ISBN-13: 978-0471378204
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,149,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost like going along, December 7, 1999

By 

Matthew G. Rassette (Midland, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Around the World in 20 Days : The Story of Our History-Making Balloon Flight (Hardcover)

I'm writing this review having only read the first 112 pages of this fantastic real-life, just-yesterday-adventure ( I kinda know how it ends...), but the good feelings that I get from hearing the first hand account of Bertrand and Brian's epic balloon has sent me out finding copies to give to friends for the Holidays. Their down to earth ( no pun intended ) narrative, while maintaining a soaring spirit of adventure reminds me of stories from favorite teachers and mentors from my past. Open this book while in your favorite chair before a warm fire, and soon you'll feel as if they are sitting across from you telling the story themselves.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful armchair adventure of historic flight., December 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Around the World in 20 Days : The Story of Our History-Making Balloon Flight (Hardcover)

Aviators Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones toggle linear narratives of their around the world journey. There's lots of emphasis on what would appear like almost every altitude, groundspeed and directional change. Still, this is perhaps the most important element to success (the weather and catching the right winds aloft) and these frequent alternations between voice of Jones and Piccard keeps the reader consumed. Yes, it can be argued (as Piccard and Jones have to agree) that the two weather wizards at Breitling base in Geneva are just as much the heroes. Some pilot introspection, humor and color images make for the ideal armchair adventure. We are made to understand that great grandson of Jules Verne supported this endeavor (greatest integrity tie to simple love of flight) more than the other attempts (financiers and simply record seekers). As such, and from this pool, it's probably with the most pure love of flight from Jones and Piccard that we are priviledged to share in this fantastic journey.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I liked it., November 18, 2009

By 

John B. Goode "JBG" (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Around the World in 20 Days: The Story of Our History-Making Balloon Flight (Paperback)

There aren't that many more firsts to do in the world, and they're all more categorical than anything else, i.e. first non-stop something, first solo something because all the highest mountains, North Poles, South Poles, source of the Niles, around the worlds have been done.

This one was the non-stop ballooning around the world. I'd heard about it at the time, but I never followed it closely. I picked it up on a whim just to see what the balloonists experienced (and because I also bought Vernes' 5 weeks in a balloon) and why it was so difficult.

The difficulty had to do with carrying all the equipment and supplies at all once. Obviously if multiple stops and resupplies had been allowed it would have been much easier, and so it was a matter of supplies, endurance, and also danger.

The book is basically a two person log or diary of the two balloonists, Bertrand Piccard from the great family of explorers and Brian Jones. It was somewhat dry, but also eventful. Each took turns relating their version of the trip from their point of view.

I enjoyed it because the book was exactly what I was looking for, a quite detailed telling of their trip. It was like Verne's 5 weeks in a balloon, except it was real. If you want to know what it was like to balloon around the world in 20 days, this is the book for you.