Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts

Richly illustrated and splendidly written, Flight in America charts the manifold ways in which the airplane has touched virtually every feature of American enterprise, history, and culture—leisure and business travel, commercial transportation, national defense, and imaginative literature. More than 125 lively photographs document the beauty of flying machines and the daring of the men and women who invented, built, and flew them.

In this volume Bilstein progresses chronologically from the time of the Wright brothers, barnstorming, and early military aviation to the rise of aviation as a business, the advent of airlines, and the technological progress of the airplane. He then spend considerable effort discussing the role of the airplane in World War II before moving into post-war developments with jet airliners, global military reach made possible with aircraft, and the beginning and development of the space age. In every sense, he offers a satisfying survey of aerospace issues that is useful both to students and scholars alike.

At a fundamental level, "Flight in America" represents an attempt to help coalesce a "New Aerospace History." Like the "New Western History" or the "New Social History" that has been so important in the last twenty years, this approach represents a significant transformation that has largely been, although not exclusively, taking place in the field. Specifically, the "New Aerospace History" is committed to relating the subject to the larger issues of society, politics, and culture, taking a more sophisticated view of the technology than historians previously held. In the past, many writers on aerospace history held a fascination with the machinery, which has been largely anthropomorphized and often seen as "magical."

The "New Aerospace History" embodied in this work moves beyond a fetish for the artifact to emphasize the broader role of the air- and spacecraft, and more importantly the whole technological system including not just the vehicle but also the other components that make up the aerospace climate, as an integral part of the human experience. This is not to be understood as lacking an interest in the artifact, or being artifactless. Rather it is an affirmation that one moves through reason and study to a larger understanding. It suggests that many unanswered questions are present in helping the development of modern flight, and that inquisitive individuals seek to know that which they do not understand. This assumption arises within historians and is based on their understanding of humans, for technological systems are constructions of the human mind or minds.

This work emphasizes, therefore, research in aerospace topics that are no longer limited to the vehicle-centered, internalist, style of history that had gone before. "Flight in America" offers all of us an opportunity to immerse ourselves in this truly challenging new approach to the field. Highly recommended.