ABSTRACT
This is a book about routine everyday reality. It is not about arcane or extraordinary phenomena. Yet stress and fatigue are often thought of as special, esoteric, or occasional factors disrupting the otherwise smooth functioning of our lives -- pathologies interfering with the normal metabolism of experience. In fact, stress and strain, weariness and depletion are integral and universal features of that experience, waxing and waning to be sure, but as much a permanent part of our humanity as fallibility and mortality. This, however, is hardly the central theme of the mythology of aviation, a world of confident young top-gun aces, avuncular silver-haired captains, and ever-vigilant air traffic controllers — unruffled, unflappable professionals, all. This is not a world in which pilots 'freeze' in emergencies, controllers suffer from 'night shift paralysis', and union disputes culminate in fist fights on the flight deck (see Chapters 7, 10, and 11, respectively).
