Items related to The Free Life: The Spirit of Courage, Folly, &...
Synopsis
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of The Free Life expedition, Anthony Smith recounts an attempt by three brave, young and obsessed people to be the first to cross the Atlantic in a balloon. The spirited sixties were in full fervor and impossible dreams were much admired.
In beauty, brains and brawn, the three balloonists were perfectly cast for the adventure. Pamela Brown and Rod Anderson were a visionary American couple who conceived of and nurtured the daring flight. Malcolm Brighton, their pilot, was a blond Englishman with a pioneer dash and swagger. The flight of The Free Life would be his 100th assent.The late Anthony Smith asks why humans follow such improbable impulses. His own appetites for adventure – including a motorcycle trip through Africa and ballooning across the Alps – put him at the receiving end of innumerable mishaps.
He weaves his thoughts about human 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.
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About the Author
Anthony Smith was a broadcaster, nature explorer, avid balloonist, science and travel writer (The Body, Mato Grosso, The Dangerous Sort, among his twenty-five books). One of his last adventures was successfully piloting a raft across the Atlantic when he was 85 years old. He died in 2014.
From the Back Cover
“Liberation, freedom – unaccountably I think about a girl I talked once in a marine supply store where she was buying rope, just a few years ago. The next day, with her young husband and British companion she rose in a balloon from the Long Island farmland and headed eastward bound for England over the Atlantic Ocean. None of the three was ever seen again. At this moment I feel moved by the name of their great adventure – The Free Life balloon.”
Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard
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