Reconsidering a Century of Flight
Edited by Roger D. Launius, Janet R. Daly Bednarek
320 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 38 ill., 1 table, notes, bibl., index
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Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-5488-4
Published: October 2003
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The contributors, all leading aerospace historians, consider four broad themes relating to the development of flight technology: innovation and the technology of flight, civil aeronautics and government policy, aerial warfare, and aviation in the American imagination. Through their attention to the political, economic, military, and cultural history of flight, the authors establish that the Wrights' invention--and all that followed in both air and space--was one of the most significant technologies of the twentieth century, fundamentally reshaping our world.
Supported by the First Flight Centennial Commission
The contributors are Janet R. Daly Bednarek, Tami Davis Biddle, Roger E. Bilstein, Hans-Joachim Braun, David T. Courtwright, Anne Collins Goodyear, Roger D. Launius, William M. Leary, David D. Lee, W. David Lewis, John H. Morrow, Dominick A. Pisano, and A. Timothy Warnock.
About the Authors
Roger D. Launius is a curator at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. He has written or edited a number of books, including Imagining Space: Achievements, Projections, Possibilities, 1950-2050.
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Janet R. Daly Bednarek is associate professor of history at the University of Dayton. She is the author of America's Airports: Airfield Development, 1918-1947.
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Reviews
"Offers useful and stimulating insights into this most American of technologies."--British Journal History of Science
"Launius and Bednarek's work is a timely and provocative overview. The book's emphasis on the cultural, aesthetic, economic, and political dimensions of the airplane and flight deepens our understanding of aerospace history and technological change."--William F. Trimble, Auburn University