Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight : A Library of America Special Publication

Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Americans in air and space, gathering sixty of the best eyewitness and participant narratives from Benjamin Franklin's letters on the first hot air balloons to Chris Jones's account of being marooned on the International Space Station. Here are those who made flight happen: Orville and Wilbur Wright, self-taught pioneers whose homespun invention stunned the world; World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose memoirs (excerpted here for the first time in unedited form) describe the frightening novelties of aerial combat; and daredevils like Texas barnstormer Slats Rodgers and test pilot Jimmy Collins. Ernest Hemingway offers a vivid dispatch on a 1922 flight over France, and Gertrude Stein muses on the look of America from the air; Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart narrate their groundbreaking transatlantic flights; Ralph Ellison reflects on the experience of African American airmen at Tuskegee; William F. Buckley Jr. recounts his mishaps as an amateur pilot; Wernher von Braun envisions a space station of the future, while astronauts John Glenn, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin provide firsthand recollections of the conquest of space. Here too, among many other subjects, are scenes and episodes in the development of commercial aviation, from the hiring of the first stewardesses and the high stress lives of air traffic controllers to the new ubiquity of what Walter Kirn calls "Airworld." A thirty-two-page insert offers photographs, some previously unpublished, of the writers and their crafts. -- Publisher's description. On the first balloons / Benjamin Franklin "Carlotte, the lady aeronaut" (Mary H. Myers) from 'Aerial adventures of Carlotta; or, Sky-larking in cloudland' From 'Gleanings in bee culture' / A.I. Root From 'A record-breaking balloon voyage' / Henry Helm Clayton The Wright brothers' aëroplane / Orville and Wilbur Wright Flying, a dream come true! / Ida M. Tarbell Aviator tells new terrors for armies / Glenn L. Martin Notes on war experiences / Eddie Rickenbacker From 'A Yankee ace in the RAF' / Bogart Rogers A Paris-to-Strasburg flight shows living cubist picture / Ernest Hemingway Air circus / Hart Stilwell and Slats Rodgers The day I sprouted wings / J. Herman Banning Transatlantic / Gilbert Seldes From 'The Spirit of St. Louis' / Charles A. Lindbergh From 'Shadows of the sun' / Harry Crosby Eight miles straight up! / Hawthorne C. Gray Across / Amelia Earhart From 'The world from the air' / Waldo Frank From 'Atlantic takeoff' / Ruth Nichols Air stewardess / Francis Vivian Drake Twelve strangers in the night / Elizabeth M. Bisgood Knapsack of salvation / Wolfgang Langewiesche None (cont.) From 'Everybody's autobiography' / Gertrude Stein From 'Test pilot' / Jimmy Collins Flying again / Anne Morrow Lindbergh The campers at Kitty Hawk / John Dos Passos From 'Adventure was the compass' / Alma Heflin From 'All the brave promises' / Mary Lee Settle Flying home / Ralph Ellison First mission / Bert Stiles From 'I've had it' / Beirne Lay Jr. From 'Flights of passage' / Samuel Hynes From 'Song of the sky' / Guy Murchie Six freshmen and an ercoupe / William F. Buckley Jr. From 'Fate Is the hunter' / Ernest K. Gann From 'Yeager : an autobiography' / Chuck Yaeger From 'The hunters' / James Salter From 'Crossing the last frontier' / Wernher von Braun From 'Flight into space' / Jonathan Norton Leonard From 'The man who rode the thunder' / William R. Rankin From 'The right stuff' / Tom Wolfe From 'Stranger to the ground' / Richard Bach From 'John Glenn, a memoir' / John Glenn From 'Flight of passage' / Rinker Buck From 'Carrying the fire' / Michael Collins None (cont.) From 'Thud Ridge' / Jack Broughton From 'Dispatches' / Michael Herr From 'Failure is not an option' / Gene Kranz From 'Of a fire on the moon' / Norman Mailer From 'Magnificent desolation' / Buzz Aldrin Big sky / Gordon Baxter From 'On extended wings' / Diane Ackerman The iron maiden / Sherman Baldwin Starduster / Laurence Gonzales From 'Something's got to give' / Darcy Frey The turn / William Langewiesche From 'Up in the air' / Walter Kirn From 'The Kabul-ki dance' / Mark Bowden Home / Chris Jones.

Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Americans in air and space, gathering sixty of the best eyewitness and participant narratives from Benjamin Franklin's letters on the first hot air balloons to Chris Jones's account of being marooned on the International Space Station. Here are those who made flight happen: Orville and Wilbur Wright, self-taught pioneers whose homespun invention stunned the world; World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose memoirs (excerpted here for the first time in unedited form) describe the frightening novelties of aerial combat; and daredevils like Texas barnstormer Slats Rodgers and test pilot Jimmy Collins. Ernest Hemingway offers a vivid dispatch on a 1922 flight over France, and Gertrude Stein muses on the look of America from the air; Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart narrate their groundbreaking transatlantic flights; Ralph Ellison reflects on the experience of African American airmen at Tuskegee; William F. Buckley Jr. recounts his mishaps as an amateur pilot; Wernher von Braun envisions a space station of the future, while astronauts John Glenn, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin provide firsthand recollections of the conquest of space. Here too, among many other subjects, are scenes and episodes in the development of commercial aviation, from the hiring of the first stewardesses and the high stress lives of air traffic controllers to the new ubiquity of what Walter Kirn calls "Airworld." A thirty-two-page insert offers photographs, some previously unpublished, of the writers and their crafts.