Flight in America

When first published in 1984, Roger Bilstein's "Flight in America" was hailed as the foremost history of what is arguably the most remarkable achievement of the 20th century - human flight. Now, in this revised and expanded edition, Bilstein continues his history of the closing decade of the present century and offers a glimpse of developments in the next. "Flight in America" charts the transformation by the aeroplane of virtually every aspect of American life, tracing aviation from the earliest discoveries of the airplane's possibilties 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, defence cutbacks, military operations, NASA restructuring and the revamped space programme. Throughout, 126 contemporary photographs show the machines and the people who invented them, built them and flew them.