No Visible Horizon: Surviving the World's Most Dangerous Sport [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Joshua Cooper Ramo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2003

"The flying life has always demanded a passage across the razor's edge. At any moment you could slip to the other side: a gas leak, weather, fire in the cockpit. Sometimes what made the risks particularly horrible was that you could watch your mistakes play out in front of you, as a chorus of guilt followed you down. Usually you survived and could describe this music to others, but none of you -- not even with a long and growing trail of dead friends -- ever stopped flying. That was the truly unthinkable thing."

In a good year aerobatics is one of the most beautiful sports imaginable. Pilots pull through impossibly elegant figures, twisting their planes at hundreds of miles an hour. The stress on their bodies reaches ten times the force of gravity, but this is nothing compared to the strain on their minds and the tension in their souls. In a bad year no sport kills more of its participants. To fly really well and to win you must depart the land of the possible and enter a place of pure faith.

In this stunning literary debut, Joshua Cooper Ramo has crafted a meditation on the seduction of flight and a passionate love letter to a life of risk. It is partly the story of his own decision, after a decade of casual aerobatics, to transform himself into a serious competitive pilot aiming to finish high at the U.S. national competition. He introduces us to some of the greatest aerobatic pilots in the world: geniuses like Leo Loudenslager, a mild-mannered American Airlines pilot who spent his weekends redefining what it was possible to do in the air with a plane, flying figures so hard they made his eyes bleed as he whimpered with pain in the cockpit; or Kirby Chambliss, theArizona pilot who performed figures just inches off the runway and sent his plane shooting through holes in cliffs.

The classics of flight and extreme adventure, "West With the Night; Wind, Sand, and Stars; " and "Into Thin Air" have brought a poetic vision to their subjects. "No Visible Horizon" is an elegant and thrilling exploration, not simply of a pilot's physical battle against gravity, but of his dream of perfection and his quest for faith.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ramo, a senior editor at Time magazine, is an aerobatic flyer, and his book chronicles his experiences from first learning how to pilot a small plane to his trips around the world competing in this sport. Although he describes his feelings-fear, nausea, dizziness, near blindness from the sudden movements-in great detail, Ramo also explores the accomplishments of other pilots, including some of their last flights. One of the more poignant anecdotes involves the death of the husband of a female pilot whom Ramo had introduced to his father. Ramo thought the woman could reassure his father about the safety of the planes: "Julie explained to my father what made the sport safe. She told him how, by paying such careful attention to our planes, we tried to remove as much of the risk as possible.... My good, sensitive father was reduced to tears, thinking of Julie's lost happiness." This is a fluid book, but it lacks the compelling story of, say, Into Thin Air. Because aerobatic flying is not a sport widely followed, the book's audience may be limited.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This tribute to aerial acrobatics (the kind of flying you see at air shows), written by a Time, Inc., editor and addicted flier, should appeal to anyone interested in the airborne arts. The book is edge-of-your-seat exciting (it begins with the author about to execute an ill-timed maneuver, absolutely sure he has just managed to kill himself). Along with accounts of his own flying adventures, Ramo introduces some of the greats of aerobatics--masters of all the rolls and dives and spins that are the basis of this visually stunning sport--and describes, with remarkable eloquence, the strange, poetic bond between a pilot and his aircraft, a relationship that turns man and machine into a single entity. Unlike many "extreme sports" books, which are written by people whose knowledge is based on research and interviews, this one is written by someone who really does this stuff. Ramo's point of view gives the book an energy that no armchair expert could possess. First-rate high-skies adventure. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 20, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743229509
• ISBN-13: 978-0743229500
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,497,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joshua Cooper Ramo is managing director at Kissinger Associates, one of the world's leading geostrategic advisory firms. Before entering the advisory business, Ramo was foreign editor and assistant managing editor of Time magazine. He divides his time between Beijing and New York, and served as China analyst for NBC during the 2008 Olympics. Ramo cochaired the Santa Fe Institute's first working group on Complexity and International Affairs and was a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, a founder of the U.S.-China Young Leaders Program, and a Global Leader for Tomorrow of the World Economic Forum. Trained as an economist, he holds degrees from the University of Chicago and New York University

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Aerobatic stories: bumpy trip through this book, October 10, 2003

By 

Captain Classical (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Visible Horizon: Surviving the World's Most Dangerous Sport (Hardcover)

I was disappointed with this book. The topic of aerobatic pilots and their unique planes sounded like it would be a fast, smooth read. Instead, though I found myself interested in the author's brief descriptions of aeobatic flying, the balance of the book left me cold.

The reader is introduced to dozens of famous aerobatic pilots but one never gets to really know any of them on a personal level. Their flying technique is well-described but I finally started feeling a detached, who-cares attitude. The book should have included some diagrams of the various aerobatic stunts to help the reader picture the stunts. Without this, I couldn't picture what was being described. Some photos of the many famous planes mentioned in the book would have been welcome too.

The author is a columnist for Time magazine and herein may be the problem with this book. No Visible Horizon reads more like a collection of columns than a cohesive, well-structured book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sensationalism over substance, October 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: No Visible Horizon: Surviving the World's Most Dangerous Sport (Hardcover)

Many of us in the aerobatic community feel that this book plays to sensational stereotypes of daredevil flying, which is not an accurate portrait of most aerobatic pilots. Ramo also uses faulty statistics to quantify the dangers involved, vastly undercounting the number of participants in the sport.

Ramo's attitudes are the sort that get people killed, as illustrated by his anecdote of starting a downward maneuver a mere 700 feet above the ocean. In point of fact pilots who observe routine safety precautions -- like maintaining a safe altitude -- are not subject to Ramo's "one mistake and you're dead" mantra.

There are some good books about aerobatics, but this is not one of them. Try Patty Wagstaff's "Fire and Air", "Basic Aerobatics" and "Advanced Aerobatics" by Szurovy & Goulian, or Alan Cassidy's "Better Aerobatics" instead.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant read - but for a limited audience!, April 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: No Visible Horizon: Surviving the World's Most Dangerous Sport (Paperback)

This is sure gonna be a contraverisal book.

This is a book which is likely to irritate competition pilots who like to present aerobatics as a lower risk than it's generally perceived - in order to .. increase acceptance.. and maybe make their wives feel better?

It's also the type of book that will bore most people who are new to aerobatics - and left my wife stone cold.. and anxious.

Tough! I loved it.

Yes, it's dramatic and over the top, and made my wife ill with worry the next time I flew - but it was aimed perfectly at me.. and for the first time in a long time I felt I had found some material which explained how I "feel" about the sport .. the passion behind it, which I have always found hard to describe.

I believe few pilots will be left unmoved by the sheer gritty intensity of it - and those that say it's an inaccurate and irresponsible represetnation of the real life, should chill and let their heair down for once. Be honest, and accept that despite all the discipline and control they insist they have, and live by, an element of wild unrestrained joy of fear is definitely there .. in all our hearts.. if not, go fly your boring boeing!

I thought it was great, and have bought several copies for people who know me - and I can finally articulate how I feel to others.. thanks Joshua!