When work got so overwhelming it was affecting his health, Nick Albert decided to make a huge change in his life. He and his wife liked taking an old house and fixing it up, but they took that to the extreme when they moved to Ireland. Fresh Eggs and Dog Beds: Living 'The Dream' in Rural Ireland is that story. Talk about contrast! Pretty much everything is different between London and their new home: traffic, crowds, how business is done ... how they make the transition is a gentle, humorous read.

A while back Wandering Reader heard a story on NPR about a man, mostly forgotten these days, who was a pioneer of flight ... and that there was a book! I missed the story on NPR, but I did find the book: Lincoln Beachey: the Man Who Owned the Sky, by Frank Marrero. Lincoln Beachey grew up in San Francisco and once took up a challenge to ride his bike, without brakes, down steep hills (sometimes several in a row). This same bravado took him on to not only be one of the first to fly, but the first to do what became stunts, although one was actually pulling out of a stall, which would be good for any pilot to know. He would draw HUGE crowds to his shows. Others would try and copy what he did, many of them dying in the attempt. What he did, that they didn't, was to start slowly, figure out what the plane could tolerate, or how to build a better plane. Although he tried to explain this, not many listened. He also tried to convince the military that future wars would need a well trained air force. Again, not many listened. This was a great, if sometimes sobering, biography. Loved all the pictures and newspaper clippings.

Reading Hermit With Dog