Hilarious, enlightening and inspiring The Man with His Head in the Clouds is anything but ordinary. Smith has artfully created a category-defying juxtaposition of historical biography and autobiographical recovery story. . . fun and accessible.' --The Psychologist 'All human life is here, served up with a light touch and keen sense of the ridiculous.' --Dr Lucy Worsley 'Pure pleasure... A brilliant blend of biography and self-help, and a bold book about ballooning, The Man with His Head in the Clouds is nothing less than a trip.' --Frances Wilson This is the story of how an uneducated Oxford pastry cook became the first Englishman to fly, in a self-built balloon powered by primitive, and potentially lethal, hydrogen. Despite taking off in force 8 gales, crashing into hills and plopping into the Irish Sea, James Sadler became a rare pioneering aeronaut to survive such perilous ascents. Good luck was not hereditary; his son's balloon fatally collided with a chimney. Sadler advanced the scientific evolution of lighter-than-air flight, and took part in both of the famous races that so captivated the public in late eighteenth-century Europe: across the Channel, and the Irish Sea. He earned Lord Nelson's endorsement for improving the Royal Navy with applied science, created one of the first--perhaps the very first--mobile steam engines and was revered by fans like Percy Shelley and Dr. Johnson. Yet even the brightest stars one day collapse, as Sadler's name emits virtually no light today. Like Sadler, Richard O. Smith emanates from Oxford's Town not Gown. Like Sadler, he wants to look down on Oxford--literally--and his admiration for the balloonist culminates in him replicating the first ever flight, also over Oxford. But there is a problem. The author suffers from acute acrophobia, a crippling fear of heights. This prevents him from standing on a stool, yet alone dangling at 3,000 feet beneath an oversized party balloon. To overcome his chronic height anxiety, he seeks pre-flight counselling, learning all about current understanding of phobias and anxieties. Here he discovers that he is also bathmophobic--a fully-functioning adult who is afraid of stairs. Inspired by Sadler, Smith sets out to overcome his debilitating fear and ascend in a balloon over Oxford. 'Be positive. You just need a will to do it,' counsels a psychologist. So, taking that advice, he starts positively, by making a will.

"Adelaide Proctor longs to find a real-life storybook hero to claim as her own. But when a husband-hunting debacle leaves her humilated, she interviews for a governess position on a remote Texas sheep ranch and vows to leave her silly romantic yearnings behind. Gideon Wescott left his privileged life in England to make a name for himself in America's wool industry, never expecting to end up with a child. To his dismay, five-year-old Isabella hasn't uttered a word since she lost her mother. The unconventionality of the new governess concerns Gideon--and intrigues him at the same time. But he can't afford distractions. When Isabella's uncle comes to claim the girl--and her inheritance--Gideon and Adelaide must work together to protect Isabella from the man's evil schemes. Soon neither can deny their growing attraction. But after so many heartbreaks, will Adelaide be willing to get her head out of the clouds and put her heart on the line?"--Page 4 of cover.

When the Man in the Clouds creates a beautiful painting, people begin to make a pilgrimage up his mountain to see it for themselves--the misfits find it especially comforting. An art expert tells the artist that it is very valuable and he begins to think about differently, determined to protect it rather than share it. Finally, he sees that his greed and possessiveness has changed the way he sees the picture so he tosses it into the fire and looks out the window with fresh eyes, seeing again the beauty that enthralled him in the first place.

Never before have we had so much information at our fingertips. You might think that we are better-informed than ever, but there’s one thing we can’t ask Google: ‘What should I be googling?’ The way we consume information in the digital age has been blamed for driving political polarisation and leaving us unable to agree on basic facts. It’s also making us stupider. Personalised news feeds and social media echo chambers narrow our potential knowledge base. By now, we don’t even know what we don’t know. In Head in the Cloud, William Poundstone investigates the true worth of knowledge. An entertaining manifesto underpinned by big data analysis and illustrated by eye-opening anecdotes, it reveals the surprising benefits of broadening your horizons and provides an unnerving look at the consequences of being ill-informed.

‘A masterpiece’ The Sunday Times ‘The pure essence of trail running, infectious and captivating’ Scott Jurek, bestselling author of Eat and Run ‘One of the best books about the extremes of sporting endeavour that you will ever read’ Independent on Sunday Twenty years since it was first published, Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith remains the definitive story of fell-running and a modern sports classic. Richard Askwith’s journey takes him into a world of forbidding rocky hills, horizontal rain, fear, exhaustion and stunning natural beauty, as well as one of the sport's purest and toughest challenges: the Bob Graham Round, running 42 Lake District peaks in 24 hours. Along the way, he encounters some of the most prodigious – and unsung – athletes that Britain has produced, such as Joss Naylor, who covered the equivalent of four Everests in a single run. Gripping, funny and moving, Feet in the Clouds is a story that any aspiring runner, endurance athlete or mountain-lover will understand well: of extremity, heroism and the experience of a lifetime. With a fully revised epilogue and an introduction from bestselling author Robert Macfarlane, this is a complete portrait of one of the few sports to have remained utterly true to its roots – in which the point is not fame or fortune but to run the ancient, wild landscape, and to be a hero, if at all, within one’s own valley.

It’s bad news when you wake up in the morning and find you’ve lost your head, especially if it’s an especially agreeable and handsome head, but there you go, such things happen. In any case, the man who loses his head in The Man Who Lost His Head isn’t about to grin (that is, if he could grin) and bear it. No, he’ll make himself a new one, and starting with a pumpkin and moving on to a parsnip and finally picking up a block of wood, he sets about getting it just right. Still, for all his efforts, it somehow isn’t right. It isn’t the head he had before. It turns out that only a brash bold boy can save the man who lost his head from losing it altogether.Claire Huchet Bishop’s charming parable is illustrated by the great Robert McCloskey, whose books for children include One Morning in Maine, Blueberries for Sal, and the Caldecott Medal–winning Make Way for Ducklings.

Repeatedly jamming his fork of curiosity into the live toaster of opportunity, comedian Richard O. Smith captures the experience of living in Oxford in probably the funniest book written about the Dreaming Spires. Collected here are 70 of his best Oxford Examined columns from the award-winning Oxford Times magazine Oxfordshire Limited Edition including several previously unpublished stories. In these unflinchingly truthful columns he meets celebrities (Kate Middleton, Dara O'Briain, the one who plays Phoebe in Friends and a predictably grumpy Alan Sugar), visits the 11th dimension with an Oxford University maths protégée, gatecrashes Encaenia, flirts with a Roman slave girl from 79AD, is ejected from the Oxford Union by burly security, witnesses a comeuppance for a pack of arrogant students, conducts a walking tour for Britain's scariest hen party, moves a library (which transpires to be harder work than moving a mountain), sees Britain's most pretentious theatre production, participates in the UK's national bell ringing championships (yes, that is a thing), allows Oxford University psychologists to experiment on him, rescues four escaped horses in a busy Oxford street (thankfully it wasn't the apocalypse), becomes a crime-fighting superhero, is hospitalised in a serious bike accident, gets chased by a furious revenge-fixated woman dressed as a Friesian cow, strides out of his house one morning and disappears down a giant sink hole, mentors two stand-up comedy virgins, commits a devastating social faux pas and pledges to never use a split infinitive or sentence this long again. 'Right from the introductory preamble, this is pure comedy genius. I dare anybody to read it and not start sniggering out loud. Warning: this may attract odd looks if you are on a bus or anywhere else in public.' --Oxford Times 'Bring together an outstanding comic writer and a city of unlikely people and you'll find the perfect love-match. The wittiest, zaniest, and most truthful guide to a city you'll read: armchair travel has never been so good. Or so funny.' --Susie Dent 'The funniest book ever about Oxford. Pure comedy genius. I read Oxford Examined and laughed so much.' --Gill Oliver, Oxford Mail