For more than a century before airplanes, people explored the sky in balloons. From 1783 to the early 1900s, aeronauts flew into storms, crossed large bodies of water, sailed over enemy armies, and soared to deadly altitudes. Illustrated in full color with dramatic period artwork, this volume features nine exhilarating stories about the pioneers of human flight, such as daredevil Sophie Blanchard from Napoleon's France, and Salomon Andree, who led an ill-fated balloon assault on the North Pole in 1897. - Publisher.