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Do you sometimes dream you can fly like a bird? Gliding effortlessly above the treetops, soaring and swooping, playing and dodging through the third dimension. Computer games, virtual reality headsets, and some drugs can lift our imagination and fly us through fabled, magical spaces. But it\\u2019s not the real thing. No wonder some of the past\\u2019s greatest minds, including Leonardo da Vinci\\u2019s, have yearned for flying machines and struggled to design them.

Shermer and Dawkins discuss: nationalism \\u2022 Russian revanchism \\u2022 the recent rise of authoritarianism and autocracies: worrying trend or temporary stumble in the arc of the moral universe? \\u2022 U.S. acceptance of the theory of evolution finally breaks the 50% barrier \\u2022 woke attacks on E. O. Wilson: why? \\u2022 why Dawkins dedicated his book to Elon \\u2022 What good is half a wing? \\u2022 What is flight good for? \\u2022 Why do some animals lose their wings? \\u2022 Why flying is easier if you are small \\u2022 physics of flying \\u2022 unpowered flight: parachuting and gliding \\u2022 powered flight and how it works \\u2022 weightlessness \\u2022 aerial plankton \\u2022 winged plants \\u2022 the difference between evolved and designed flying machines.

Richard Dawkins is one of the world\\u2019s most eminent writers and thinkers, and a major contributor to the public understanding of the science of evolution. The award-winning author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion and a string of other bestselling science books, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature.