Wings

"There have probably been hundreds of aviation history surveys – a good handful came out around the 100th anniversary of Kitty Hawk in 2003 – and I’ve a read a number of them. Wings is by far the best one-volume study that we have – many reviewers agreed. It’s just wonderfully written. It’s comprehensive and takes a wide view. For example, Crouch includes kites, which the Chinese began flying thousands of years ago. He covers the development of the jet engine, which is thought to be mainly an English story, at least at its beginnings. Many other histories tell the story of flight just from an American perspective. There’s some validity to that: The Wright Brothers invented the first practical airplane, we had many other technological firsts and certainly had more airplanes than other countries early on. But the story of flying is really international, that’s how Crouch tells it and that’s why I chose Wings . All of these books are very readable, even though one is published by an academic press. I don’t like books unless they’re well written and accessible to ordinary folk. That’s an interesting question. In the early days, the era of invention, the so-called “golden age” of flight from the Wright Brothers through World War II, that was true. Everyone knew the name of World War I American fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker and Germany’s Manfred von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron. Young boys in particular grew up gaga over airplanes. Even some of the British and French World War I heroes became household names. These survivors of military combat were larger than life in our view because what they did often involved tremendous courage, vision and skill. But pilots aren’t seen as larger than life any more. Today a pilot is considered a functionary, they press buttons, follow computers, tell you to put on your seatbelt and nobody knows their names."