How to Keep a Plane in the Sky

‘Things fall apart… but Alex Davies tells the story of the people who pick up the pieces, subject them to rigorous testing, and rebuild the world.’ Adam Rogers, author of Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern

‘Engaging, witty, and deeply insightful’ Roma Agrawal, author of Nuts and Bolts

‘Wildly entertaining and surprisingly profound.’ Guru Madhavan, author of Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

‘A relentlessly entertaining and engaging dive into the hidden world of those working to keep the world moving. From radioactive tea leaves to the threats posed by bearded seals to aircraft, this book is crammed with so many interesting nuggets that you’ll never take modern conveniences for granted again.’ Edward Brooke-Hitching, The Most Interesting Book in the World

‘Highly entertaining.’ Janelle Shane, author of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You

‘I can’t remember the last book I devoured this quickly, or the last writer whose company I enjoyed this much.’ PJ Vogt, host of the Search Engine podcast

‘In How to Keep a Plane in the Sky, technology journalist Alex Davies looks at the hidden dangers of the stuff we use everyday – and how we owe the (mostly) remarkable reliability of products to the hidden, obsessive yet methodical work of very smart test engineers. A book about test engineering runs the risk of being dry, but Davies fills his account with eye-opening and quirky examples of successes and failures … Davies’s writing is technical yet accessible and he is good on minutiae … compelling.’ Independent Non-Fiction Book of the Month

‘Vivid and disarming…. Davies makes a compelling case that test engineering—unglamorous, and largely invisible—is among the most consequential contributions to public safety and consumer trust that modern society has produced. [How to Keep a Plane in the Sky] is an entertaining, informative, and occasionally sprawling celebration of that work—and of the people, and bears, who do it.’ Science

‘Quirky … Test engineering isn’t perfect, but it’s heartening to read the success stories.’ Mail on Sunday

ALEX DAVIES is a senior editor at Amazon and the author of Driven. He was formerly an editor at Wired, where he launched the transportation section in 2016. He lives in Beacon, New York.

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