Heroes and villains
Is your view of early flight a series of comical errors, as naive experiments that more often than not went wrong or as as a bunch of courageous and incredibly skilled individuals to whom we owe the fact that modern air travel is still a statistically safe way to swallow up huge distances quickly and efficiently?
Bill Bryson's One Summer America 1927 captures all aspects of this story from the downright stupid to the breathtakingly adventurous to the scandalously eye boggling. Did you have the American government down as committing mass murder on their own population - never mind others? Thought not. Read the section on prohibition. Al Capone and the bootleggers come out looking like public servants. I must admit the sexual exploits of Babe Ruth (or was it rounders, sorry baseball) got a little dull during the score reporting but that's a homage to Bill's Dad who was a sports journalist in Des Moines (after all someone had to be).
Star of the book is undoubtedly Charles Lindbergh. I can't say I got to understand him in any meaningful way because he is an extremely enigmatic figure who endured extreme fame, personal tragedy and political error of judgement in equal measure. But what a pilot. It's wrong, of course, to ascribe celebrity status to one individual amongst so many who tamed the skies and pushed flight into the twentieth and twenty first century. But then again this is what this book is about: an extraordinary moment in time with a whole cast of characters you really couldn't invent.
Bill Bryson's One Summer America 1927 captures all aspects of this story from the downright stupid to the breathtakingly adventurous to the scandalously eye boggling. Did you have the American government down as committing mass murder on their own population - never mind others? Thought not. Read the section on prohibition. Al Capone and the bootleggers come out looking like public servants. I must admit the sexual exploits of Babe Ruth (or was it rounders, sorry baseball) got a little dull during the score reporting but that's a homage to Bill's Dad who was a sports journalist in Des Moines (after all someone had to be).
Star of the book is undoubtedly Charles Lindbergh. I can't say I got to understand him in any meaningful way because he is an extremely enigmatic figure who endured extreme fame, personal tragedy and political error of judgement in equal measure. But what a pilot. It's wrong, of course, to ascribe celebrity status to one individual amongst so many who tamed the skies and pushed flight into the twentieth and twenty first century. But then again this is what this book is about: an extraordinary moment in time with a whole cast of characters you really couldn't invent.
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