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.
Review
"The most comprehensive survey of the history of American aeronautics and space flight yet published."
--Technology and Culture
"Bilstein casts wide and far to net virtually everything from technological trends and research and development
to the effect of air travel on the expansion of major league baseball in the 1950s and early 1960s... A superior
work that will satisfy aero buffs and professionals alike."
--Journal of American History
"By far the best book on man and air travel yet written."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"For those who won't soon be able to visit the National Air and Space Museum, perhaps the next best thing
would be to read Flight in America."
--Chronicle of Higher Education
Johns Hopkins University Press Web Site, June, 2001
Summary
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.
Table of Contents
Preface to the Third Edition
Abbreviations
The Awkward Years: Early Flight to 1918
p. 3
The Aviation Business, 1918-1930
p. 41
Adventure, Airways, and Innovation, 1930-1940
p. 83
Air Power at War, 1930-1945
p. 125
Air-Age Realities, 1945-1955
p. 167
Higher Horizons, 1955-1965
p. 205
From the Earth to the Moon, 1965-1975
p. 247
Aerospace Perspectives, 1975-1983
p. 285
Turmoil and Transition, 1983-2000
p. 327
Notes
p. 371
Index
p. 395
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.