Flying has long represented that beautiful, high stakes human drive to invent, to explore, to experience. Caroline Paul has known this since getting her pilot certificate at twenty years old. Now she’s in her fifties, and her long-term marriage is dissolving beneath her. She begins to fly a gyrocopter. Isn’t it easier to learn a landing than a human heart?

As Paul examines the descent of love through the ascent of flight, she turns her eye to the history, physics, and human impact of flying. From the brave Night Witches who flew biplanes against the Nazi Luftwaffe, to the ultralight pilots who believe they can save endangered birds by becoming one of the flock, to the many people unable to step onto a passenger plane, Why Fly examines the ways flight, like love, confounds and yet transforms us. Often we soar. But we also crash land. Still, we want to fly. Why?