Ballooning can be both all-absorbing relaxation and high-tech sport. This text tells its amazing story from the Montgolfier brothers to today's riders of the jetstream - the narrow band of fast winds high in the Earth's atmosphere. Fascinating historical byways are glimpsed, from Napoleonic visions of airborne armies to the exploits of Edwardian thrill-seekers.;With each technological advance balloonists became more ambitious, taking bigger risks to fly further and higher. The pressurized capsule, invented in the 1930s to replace the wicker basket, allowed access to the upper atmosphere. In the 1980s the latest, most thrilling phase in ballooning's history began. Successively, millionaire adventurers, backyard dreamers and experienced pilots attempted to circumnavigate the globe against overwhelming odds, at times caught up in political intrigue, at others tossed by violent storms. In the full glare of worldwide attention some endured humiliating defeats. Bertrand Picard and Brian Jones in Breitling Orbiter 3 ultimately made history, but other colourful figures have also made significant contributions to the era of global ballooning.; John Christopher - a professional balloon pilot - offers an insider's view of the obsessive world of ballooning, taking the reader into the balloons themselves and the minds of the people who ride them.