The Free Life: The Spirit of Courage, Folly and Obsession

Winner of our Thirteenth Annual Editors' Book Award, The Free Life recounts an attempt by three brave, young, and obsessed people to be the first to cross the Atlantic in a balloon. The Free Life brings back the era of the sixties and recalls the determination of all explorers through history.
Anthony Smith, noted science and travel writer (The Body, Mato Grosso, The Dangerous Sort), explorer, and lighter-than-air enthusiast, asks why humans follow such improbable impulses. His own appetites for adventure—including a motorcycle trip through Africa and ballooning across the Alps—have put him at the receiving end of innumerable mishaps. He weaves his thoughts about endeavor around the doomed 1970 flight of The Free Life from East Hampton, New York—a symbol of the end of an era and of the human longing for the unknown.