“Things My Flight Instructor Never Told Me” is filled with excellent advice, delivered with humor. “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” Author Michael Leighton says that summarizes his personal experience with general aviation. This rather slim volume is filled with excellent advice, developed from just such “experience” during a […]
Books
‘Success on the Step’ chronicles the history of Kenmore Air
“Success on the Step” tells the history of Kenmore Air, started in 1946 by a pilot and two mechanics who wanted to “be our own bosses and be involved in aviation.” It was a one-plane operation based at Kenmore Air Harbor, basically a mud bog near Seattle. None of them had ever heard of a […]
From farm boy to bomber pilot
During World War II, bomber pilots called the easier missions “milk runs,” but did you know there were also ice cream missions? That’s one of the side notes in “Pilot from the Prairie,” the memoirs of Edgar J. Allen. Allen, who now lives in Burien, Washington, flew 30 missions as a B-24 pilot. The book […]
A tribute to wartime flyers
Although a work of fiction, “A Common Glory” is based on fact and makes good use of historic photographs, as it weaves a charming but sometimes tragic Southern love story during World War II. George Westcott is a Royal Air Force pilot instructor, training RAF cadets at the U.S. Army Air Corps’ Cochran Field in […]
‘Weaving the Winds’ tells the tale of one of the first female airline pilots
These days it is not uncommon to see a woman at the controls of an airliner, but what many people do not realize is that it took some 59 years for an American woman to become an airline pilot. Leading the way was Emily Howell Warner, who on Feb. 6, 1973, entered the cockpit of […]
A new look at aviation’s first century
“Reconsidering a Century of Flight” is a compilation of a dozen long articles, by an interesting variety of aerospace writers, that takes a new look at aviation’s first century and its effects on society. Drawing on existing scholarship as well as new research, editors Roger B. Launius and Janet Daly Bednarek have divided the essays […]
Flying High (Book Review)
Can a hyperactive, teetotalling, non-flying entrepreneur, whose first business went bankrupt and who was fired by a top company, do anything significant in the airline business? If your name is David Neeleman, the answer is a high-flying “yes,” as told in the new book “Flying High, How JetBlue Founder and CEO David Neeleman Beats the […]
To Conquer the Air (Book Review)
“To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and The Great Race for Flight” by James Tobin. Tobin, who holds a Ph.D. in history, is a writer whose work has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. He traces the work of the Wrights and interweaves it with the efforts of others who were […]