Bird Dream ― Adventures at the Extremes of Human Flight

"[R]iveting... a must-read. A highflying, electrifying story of a treacherous sport in which every triumph is an eye blink away from becoming a disaster."--Kirkus (STARRED)

A heart-stopping narrative of risk and courage, Bird Dream tells the story of the remarkable men and women who pioneered the latest advances in aerial explorationfrom skydiving to BASE jumping to wingsuit flyingand made history with their daring.

Bird Dream shows that recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented revolution in human flight. By the end of the twentieth century BASE jumping was the most dangerous of all the extreme sports, with thrill-seeking jumpers parachuting from bridges, mountains, radio towers, and even skyscrapers. Despite numerous fatalities and legal skirmishes, BASE jumpers like Jeb Corliss of California thought they had discovered the ultimate rush. But all this changed for Corliss in 1999, when, high in the mountains of northern Italy, he and other jumpers watched in wonder as a strangerwearing a cunning new jumpsuit featuring wings” between the arms and legsleaped from a ledge and then actually flew from the vertiginous cliffs. This dude’s flying, thought Corliss with a start. This changes everything.

What Corliss had witnessed was a wingsuit, an innovation more flying squirrel than bird or plane. Wingsuits were not new; they had fascinated men for centuries. Yet a modern design had improved safety and performance, allowing wingsuit pilots to leap from a helicopter or high cliff and soar for milesusing little more than their bodiesbefore deploying a parachute to reach the ground safely. The best pilots could fly close to the earth, rapidly navigating narrow canyons and mountain ranges. Still, colossal dangers remained, and the beauty of exploring human flight with such unprecedented grace would exact the ultimate cost for some pilotsthey would pay with their lives.

Drawing on intimate access to Corliss and other top pilots from around the globe,Bird Dream tracks the evolution of the wingsuit movement through the larger than life characters who, in an age of viral video, forced the sport onto the world stage. Their exploitswhich entranced millions of fans along the waydefied imagination. They were flying; not like the Wright brothers, but the way we do in our dreams.

Some dared to dream of going further yet, to a day when a wingsuit pilot might fly, and land, all without a parachute. A growing number of wingsuit pilots began plotting ways in which a human being might leap from the sky and land. A half dozen groups around the world were dedicated to this quest for a wingsuit landing,” conjuring the pursuit of nations that once inspired the race to first summit Everest.

Given his fame as a stuntman, the brash, publicity-hungry Corliss remained the popular favorite to claim the first landing. Yet Bird Dream also tracks the path of another man, Gary Connerya forty-two-year-old Englishmanwho was quietly plotting to beat Corliss at his own game. Accompanied by an international cast of wingsuit devoteesincluding a Finnish magician, a parachute tester from Brazil, an Australian computer programmer, a gruff hang-gliding champion-turned-aeronautical engineer, a French skydiving champion, and a South African costume designerCorliss and Connery raced to leap into the unknown, a contest that would lead to triumph for one and nearly cost the other his life.

Based on five years of firsthand reporting and original interviews, Bird Dream is the work of journalist Matt Higgins, who traveled the world alongside these extraordinary men and women as they jumped and flew in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Offering a behind-the-scenes take on some of the most spectacular and disastrous events of the wingsuit movement, Higgins’sBird Dream is a riveting, adrenaline-fueled adventure at the very edge of human experience.