Hard Air

<p><em>Hard Air</em> is a book about extraordinary flying--flying under conditions that keep fighters on the carrier deck and rockets on the launch pad--a book about rescue missions and long lonely flights to gather urgently needed information about flights to places where no one should be flying: into hurricanes firestorms and deep engine-killing cold. As a pilot himself W. Scott Olsen brings to these tales a sense of wonder and adventure as well as a genuine firsthand understanding of the dangers and rigors of such flying. In prose that deftly conveys the grit and grace of his subjects Olsen transports us into the air with hurricane hunters who fly into the planet's fiercest storms with helicopter pilots racing emergency patients to clinics with Canadian pilots who fly supplies to the Arctic and with heavy air tanker pilots who drop water and slurry on remote wildfires. Their stories afford a rare look into the working lives of pilots whose methods are extreme and missions are simple: get there do the job and get out alive.</p><p></p><p>W. Scott Olsen is a professor of English at Concordia College in Moorhead Minnesota. He is editor of the literary journal <em>Ascent</em> and author of several books including <em>At Speed: Traveling the Long Road between Two Points</em> (Nebraska 2006) and <em>Gravity: The Allure of Distance.</em></p><p></p>