Levitation tells the peculiar story of those who have dreamed, believed, or practiced levitation through history, whether they were successful or not. 

Levitation couldbe thought of best as a pre- and parallel history of aviation, but it is not reallyabout flights of the aeronautical kind. Instead, the book tracks the long-standing belief that people can actually float in the air, relatively unaided.Early modern scientists believed in the force of levity as an opposing forceto gravity; traditional societies have held deep-rooted shamanic traditionsof spirit- and dream-flight through storytelling. Ancient religious movementshave long believed in the power of ascetic saints to hover in sublime ecstasy.Magicians and mesmerists have employed the tricks of stage, cinema, andthe enigma of Eastern traditions to convince audiences of their power to liftthrough thought alone. And science-fiction novelists and urban plannershave speculated on floating cities hovering high above the earth. Many artistshave experimented with levitation too, from the Surrealists to Yves Klein.

In this book, Peter Adey explores the idea of levitation within our cultural,scientific, and spiritual lives. From science to illustration, poetry, philosophy,law, technology, and the wider popular, spiritual, and visual imagination,Levitation casts the levitator as a far more vulnerable figure than we mayhave thought.