The Flight of A Stone Bird is about the triumph of the human spirit over the adversities that defined ‘indenture’ and its legacy. In the struggle to unshackle their bondage, men and women scratched out niches with bloodied hands to write a chapter of their existence, a shared destiny and a common destination. From the fragments of a common past and a mutual predicament, another bond emerged – the ‘brotherhood’. Emotional, enduring and powerful, devoid of the vestiges of caste or religion, this bond, which became as intimate as real blood kinship, was cherished by men well into their twilight years as a memory of a shared ordeal and of solidarity against the antagonism and adversities of a hostile new world. We shall forever remember those who built the steps we take.

PEN / ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing (2015 LONGLIST) “[P]erversely entertaining... In a truly intoxicating read that was hard to put down, Matt Higgins has managed to make real a world about as far removed from daily life as it gets.” --Daily Beast "Matt Higgins cracks open this astonishingly dangerous sport and captures the spectacular adrenaline surges it delivers."--The Wall Street Journal "[R]iveting... a must-read. A highflying, electrifying story." --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 exploration—from skydiving to BASE jumping to wingsuit flying—and made history with their daring. 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 stranger—wearing a cunning new jumpsuit featuring “wings” between the arms and legs—leaped from a ledge and then actually flew from the vertiginous cliffs. 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 exploits—which entranced millions of fans along the way—defied 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 Connery—a forty-two-year-old Englishman—who was quietly plotting to beat Corliss at his own game. Accompanied by an international cast of wingsuit devotees—including 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 designer—Corliss 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’s Bird Dream is a riveting, adrenaline-fueled adventure at the very edge of human experience.

It might look like a pebble from the beach, but Eliza knows this is an egg. And one night when she hears cracking, she discovers the Stone Bird. It might still look like a stone to her mom, but Eliza knows it's alive. Step into the magical world of one child's imagination in this stunning debut by exciting new author Jenny McCartney, illustrated by luminary of children's books Patrick Benson.

Human animals are despoiling nature and causing a sixth extinction on Earth. Our natural environment is being compromised, and birds and other animals are disappearing at an alarming rate. Flight from Grace does not so much reveal the extent of the damage as ask and answer the perplexing question: why? This book traces human reverence for birds from the Stone Age and the New Stone Age, through the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Peru, and Greece and through biblical traditions, up to its vestiges in the present. Richard Pope takes a hard look at Judaeo-Christian and ancient Greek thought to demonstrate how the emergence of anthropocentrism and belittling of nature led to our present-day ecological dilemma. Striking images of cultural artifacts -- many little-known -- together with extensive discussion of art, music, literature, and religion illustrate the paradox in our contemporary relationship to the natural world. Humanity, in moving from its paleolithic origins to modern times, has simultaneously distanced itself from and disenchanted nature. Suggesting that the replacement of an animistic worldview with a mechanistic one has led humans to deny their animality, Flight from Grace calls on readers to appreciate how our past relationship with birds might help transform our current relationship with nature.

Selections from English and American literature are accompanied by explanatory notes and study questions.

Bird-Bent Grass chronicles an extraordinary mother–daughter relationship that spans distance, time, and, eventually, debilitating illness. Personal, familial, and political narratives unfold through the letters that Geeske Venema-de Jong and her daughter Kathleen exchanged during the late 1980s and through their weekly conversations, which started after Geeske was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease twenty years later. In 1986, Kathleen accepted a three-year teaching assignment in Uganda, after a devastating civil war, and Geeske promised to be her daughter’s most faithful correspondent. The two women exchanged more than two hundred letters that reflected their lively interest in literature, theology, and politics, and explored ideas about identity, belonging, and home in the context of cross-cultural challenges. Two decades later, with Geeske increasingly beset by Alzheimer’s disease, Kathleen returned to the letters, where she rediscovered the evocative image of a tiny, bright meadow bird perched precariously on a blade of elephant grass. That image – of simultaneous tension, fragility, power, and resilience – sustained her over the years that she used the letters as memory prompts in a larger strategy to keep her intellectually gifted mother alive. Deftly woven of excerpts from their correspondence, conversations, journal entries, and email updates, Bird-Bent Grass is a complex and moving exploration of memory, illness, and immigration; friendship, conflict, resilience, and forgiveness; cross-cultural communication, the ethics of international development, and letter-writing as a technology of intimacy. Throughout, it reflects on the imperative and fleeting business of being alive and loving others while they’re ours to hold.

A beautifully illustrated book following the extraordinary 18,000-mile annual migration of the Red Knot.