The history of the air age has mostly been written from the
perspective of aircraft designers, builders, and pilots.
Imagining Flight is a history of the air age as the rest of us have
experienced it: on the pages of books, the screens of movie
theaters, and the front pages of newspapers. It is a book about the
ways in which people outside the aviation business have looked at,
dreamed about, and worried over powered flight in the century
since the Wright brothers first showed a startled world that it was
possible.
Explores the larger significance of:
• Charles Lindbergh’s face
• Amelia Earhart’s leather jacket
• Chuck Yeager’s voice
Tells the story behind:
• The Red Baron’s reputation
• WW II bomber crew movies
• The “passenger lands airliner” legend
Takes readers back to the days when:
• The airplane was expected to make war obsolete
• Air travel included real food and seats that converted to beds
Imagining Flight considers these themes in light of the September
11 terrorist attacks and the Columbia disaster. It is thus the first
book to explore the entire first century of flight through the eyes of
those who watched it from the ground.
_________________________________________________________
A. BOWDOIN VAN RIPER is a historian of science and technology
who teaches at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta,
Georgia.
Number Seven: Centennial of Flight Series
What people are saying about this book
"It is an ambitious project . . . The value of Van Riper's book derives
from his ability to cover a wide swath of material succinctly. Imagining
Flight will introduce readers new to the field of aviation history to
material that has great relevancy for the history of technology in
general."—Anne Collins Goodyear, assistant curator of prints and
drawings at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in
Washington, D.C, Technology and Culture
“. . . adds to the literature on the social and cultural meaning of
technology in the twentieth century . . .”—William Trimble,
Auburn University
