Imagine a City

Imagine a City

A Pilot’s Love Letter to the World’s Greatest Cities

Summary

A pilot's love letter to the world's greatest cities from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Skyfaring


'A journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energised, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives' ALAIN DE BOTTON


Growing up in his small hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spun the illuminated globe in his bedroom and dreamt of elsewhere - of distant, real cities, and a perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination.

Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent more than two decades crossing the skies of our planet and touching down in the cities he'd always longed to see. Imagine a City celebrates the metropolises he has come to know and love through the lens of the hometown his heart has never left. From the sweeping roads of Los Angeles and the old gates of Jeddah to the intricate, dream-inspired plan of Brasília, he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home.

'Vanhoenacker... has a near-bottomless appetite for fresh sights and guidebook curiosities... Intimate and thoughtful' PICO IYER, AIR MAIL

'A love letter to the cities he's returned to again and again... Vanhoenacker captivates when describing the silent beauty of a world glimpsed from above' Washington Post

'Eloquent... A love song to cities the world over' Wall Street Journal

Reviews

  • Imagine a City... will enchant and even move anyone who feared in recent years for the future of both travel and urbanism
    Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

About the author

Mark Vanhoenacker

Mark Vanhoenacker is a commercial airline pilot and the author of the international bestseller Skyfaring and How to Land a Plane. A regular contributor to the New York Times and the Financial Times, he has also written for Wired, The Times and the Los Angeles Times. He worked in business before starting his flight training in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the globe. Described as 'a poet of the skies' (Spectator), Mark changes how readers view the world.
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