War in Iran
The headlines are built on long histories and debates.
Posted on in Hot Topic
Aviation
With recent plane crashes throwing air travel under greater scrutiny, these books consider the many different dimensions of aviation.
Posted on February 20, 2025 in Hot Topic
Bibel, G. D. Plane crash: the forensics of aviation disasters, by G. B. Bibel and Robert Hedges. Johns Hopkins, 2018. 322p bibl index ISBN 9781421424484, $29.95; ISBN 9781421424491 ebook, $29.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE February 2018
In this excellent, in-depth study of aviation disasters, a mechanical engineering professor (Univ. of North Dakota) and an airline captain join forces to bring their distinct perspectives to a gripping topic. The text complements Bibel’s previous book, Beyond the Black Box: The Forensics of Airplane Crashes (CH, Jun’08, 45-5601), but easily stands alone, folding analyses of cases discussed previously together with accounts of more recent accidents. So many cases fill this book that they often overlap as they are discussed and then reemerge in later chapters. This plethora of detailed investigative information, whether in an engineering context or in the pilot’s sidebar, gives the reader substantial insights—often including mathematical formulas—about the events and issues they illustrate. The text is logically organized from takeoff to landing, and is replete with photos, tables, diagrams, drawings, and other excellent explanatory illustrations. Scholarly apparatus include about 6 pages of notes and 15 pages of references, and a detailed index. The volume blends history with forensics and engineering in a manner that will appeal to specialists and general readers alike. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. —J. Agee, independent scholar
Broadnax, Samuel L. Blue skies, black wings: African American pioneers of aviation. Praeger, 2007. 180p ISBN 0275991954, $44.95; ISBN 9780275991951, $44.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE August 2007
Broadnax provides a long-needed book. He has been a newscaster and journalist, and graduated with Class 45-3 as a Tuskegee Airman in March 1945. This was just too late for him to fly his P-51 in combat. However, he tells what it was like to be an African American man of courage and skill in the racist south and US Army of that time. It required much for one to put up with the indignities inflicted on those young men at that time. Likewise, it must have been gratifying to see their commanding officer, who had been a captain in a segregated army, retire little more than two decades later as a lieutenant-general in an integrated US Air Force. The Tuskegee Airmen helped edge their country a little closer to its self-proclaimed image, as did many other whites and African Americans. Broadnax paints a clear picture of how those young men earned their commissions as second lieutenants in the US Army Air Force of more than six decades ago. Their story is well worth reading now. Perhaps some readers will be inspired to edge us even closer to the dream. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers; lower- and upper-division undergraduates; two-year technical program students. —M. Levinson, University of Washington
Busch, Andrew E. Ronald Reagan and the firing of the air traffic controllers. University Press of Kansas, 2024. 167p bibl index ISBN 9780700636907, $69.99; ISBN 9780700636914 pbk, $24.99; ISBN 9780700636921 pbk, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2025
Ronald Reagan’s decision to fire nearly 10,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 made his reputation as a resolute leader. This was in the context of a Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO) strike orchestrated by union officials who bet that the president would cave to their demands because not doing so would risk airline safety and potential chaos in the air. PATCO’s leaders lost that bet. In this compact and thoroughly absorbing work, Busch (Claremont McKenna College) discusses the strike’s antecedents, unfolding, and ramifications, including the disintegration of PATCO and public approbation for the president. The key to the strike’s failure proved to be a matter of law. Federal employees could legally negotiate better work conditions, but they could not strike. For Reagan—and the general public that supported him—that was the bottom line. Reagan’s instincts about how Americans would respond to his firing of the controllers proved astute. His key decision evidently contributed to an easing of labor demands along a broad front, thereby helping to quell inflation. Well researched and cogently argued, this work is a model case study of one president’s effective response to a major challenge. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. —M. J. Birkner, Gettysburg College
Dobson, Alan P. FDR and civil aviation: flying strong, flying free. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 280p ISBN 0230106668, $85.00; ISBN 9780230106666, $85.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE February 2012
Dobson (politics, Univ. of Dundee, UK) describes an important facet of the New Deal’s modernization of the Victorian US government (without actually saying so) in this recent title in the publisher’s “World of the Roosevelts” series. FDR represented the “Lost Generation” of young men who served in WW I, he as assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt’s views derived from Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890) and his own commitment to commercial freedom. Strangely, though, Dobson does not mention the parallel technological revolution that may be said to have begun with Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo transatlantic flight, nor the Douglas DC-3 and its successors that enabled FDR’s vision to lead the Allies to victory in 1945. This is very much an excellent political and administrative history showing how the pragmatic, practical Roosevelt set the US on the path to recovery from the Great Depression and to the global Convention on International Civil Aviation in Chicago in 1944. This important, instructive book fills a gap in the history of the diplomacy of aviation. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. —R. Higham, Kansas State University
Hansen, James R. The bird is on the wing: aerodynamics and the progress of the American airplane. Texas A&M, 2003. 273p ISBN 1585442887, $50.00; ISBN 1585442437 pbk, $24.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE June 2004
The fruit of a NASA-sponsored multivolume project to document the history of aerodynamics in the US, this survey focuses on breakthrough developments in the field of aerodynamics, with an emphasis on contributions made by NASA and predecessor National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Historian Hansen covers such topics as the Wright Brothers; streamlining during the intervening years that produced the DC-3; the problem of compressibility and breaking the sound barrier; the “area rule” and the supersonic design revolution; and the rise and fall of the SST. He concludes with a chapter on the future of flight that examines the speculations of Theodore von Kármán and Dietrich Küchemann. Throughout, Hansen’s emphasis is on individuals, and he celebrates the role of John Stack, Richard Whitcomb, Ezra Kotcher, and other talented aeronautical engineers. Nicely illustrated and gracefully written by one of the leading experts in the field, this volume is the finest introduction available to the revolutionary changes that took place in aeronautics during the 20th century. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels. —W. M. Leary, University of Georgia
McShane Wulfhart, Nell. The great stewardess rebellion: how women launched a workplace rebellion at 30,000 feet. Doubleday, 2022. 309p bibl index ISBN 9780385546454, $30.00; ISBN 9780593082294 pbk, $17.00; ISBN 9780385546461 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2023
Stewardesses in the 1960s and 1970s were imagined as waitresses in the sky and glamorous playthings for men. Forced to undergo humiliating weight checks, wear sexy outfits, and be fired when they married or reached age 32, stewardesses were not perceived as air safety professionals. As Wulfhart (journalist) explains with the aid of many advertisements, the airplane cabin was the sexist workplace in America. The airlines, the media, and the male-dominated Transport Workers Union (TWU) disparaged stewardesses until they began to organize. The 1964 Civil Right Act banned sex discrimination, but the government did not enforce this provision. Stewardesses fought the US government to treat sex discrimination as real discrimination. They created an organization to push back on demeaning images of stewardesses in the media, and they left the TWU to form a new union that would fight for working women. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by a stewardess that marriage had nothing to do with job competence, thereby protecting all women workers from being fired upon marriage. Wulfhart profiles several flight attendants, from their decisions to become stewardesses through their training and career challenges. The result is a highly readable history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —C. E. Neumann, Miami University
Thomas, Andrew R. Aviation insecurity: the new challenges of air travel. Prometheus Books, 2003. 263p ISBN 1591020743 pbk, $21.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE December 2003
There is no glory in being a victim; to prevent being victims we must deal with reality and facts. We must think like potential attackers and realize that attackers will go after weaknesses, not strengths. Global business expert Thomas (Cleveland State Univ.; Myers Univ.) says this and more in his focused and accurate book. His insightful analyses of recent events within the aviation world are excellent, and his approach could easily be applied to the maritime and land-based transportation industries as well. Thomas shows that we cannot and should not depend on technology and governments alone to defend us against aviation threats, especially from terrorists. He argues that we must instead develop a culture of responsibility; all of us as citizens need to have a high sense of situational awareness and use that awareness to take action when appropriate, and to alert law enforcement authorities when security threats are perceived. Air terrorism is criminal activity, and as such we all need to take responsibility to prevent that behavior. As Thomas states, “No accountability, no justice, no progress.” Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels. —M. W. Carr, Maine Maritime Academy
Rust, Daniel L. Flying across America: the airline passenger experience. Oklahoma, 2009. 259p ISBN 9780806138701, $45.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE September 2009
If one excludes the 9/11 security changes, today’s college undergraduates have seen little change in the US transcontinental air transport system in their lifetimes; the Boeing 747 had been in service nearly 20 years when they were born. In Flying across America, Rust (transportation studies, Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis) describes and analyzes the dramatic changes in air travel from the 1920s through the 1960s. Focusing less on the technologies involved than on the social changes air travel brought about, the book is based in part on contemporary published firsthand reports of regular passengers in eight different eras. These accounts range from descriptions of the mail planes of the railroad-dominated late 1920s, with a single passenger squeezed into an open cockpit with sacks of mail, through the introduction of the first true passenger aircraft and the jet airliner, to the present post-9/11 era. Rust discusses the impact of the introduction of flight attendants, in-flight food, night flying, improvements in navigation and safety, increase in speed and comfort, postwar nonscheduled airlines, and the development of low-cost coach service. In coffee-table-book format, this is a well-written, well-organized, and well-documented description of this evolution. Includes 100 contemporary photos and promotional illustrations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General and academic audiences, lower-division undergraduates and above. —G. E. Herrick, Maine Maritime Academy