Flight in America : from the Wrights to the astronauts

Roger E. Bilstein's Flight in America has won acclaim as the foremost history of one of the twentieth century's landmark achievements—human flight. In this revised and expanded third edition, Bilstein chronicles changes in military, commercial, and space aviation in the 1990s. He offers a glimpse of the developments one might expect in the new millennium. 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. Author Biography: Roger E. Bilstein is a professor of history, emeritus, at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He is the author of Flight Patterns: Trends of Aeronautical Development in the United States, 1918-1929 and Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Technology and Culture The most comprehensive survey of the history of American aeronautics and space flight yet published. Richly illustrated and splendidly written, "Flight in America" charts the transformation by the airplane of virtually every aspect of American life, tracing aviation from the earliest discoveries of the airplane's possibilities for entertainment, commerce, and war to the fantasies of science fiction and the realities of jet and space travel. New to this edition are discussions of airline mergers and deregulation, defense cutbacks, military operations, NASA restructuring, and the revamped space program. Throughout, 126 contemporary photographs show the machines and the people who invented them, built them, and flew them. Frontmatter Preface to the Third Edition (page ix) Abbreviations (page xi) 1. The Awkward Years: Early Flight to 1918 (page 3) 2. The Aviation Business, 1918-1930 (page 41) 3. Adventure, Airways, and Innovation, 1930-1940 (page 83) 4. Air Power at War, 1930-1945 (page 125) 5. Air-Age Realities, 1945-1955 (page 167) 6. Higher Horizons, 1955-1965 (page 205) 7. From the Earth to the Moon, 1965-1975 (page 247) 8. Aerospace Perspectives, 1975-1983 (page 285) 9. Turmoil and Transition, 1983-2000 (page 327) Notes (page 371) Index (page 395) During the month of September 1903, few people anywhere had reason to take particular interest in the appearance of the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, at a lonely stretch of beach near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Cover aeronautics and astronautics in America from early attempts at flight up through 2000