1001 Aviation Facts
Amazing and Little-Known Information About All Aspects of Aviation
by Mike Machat, editor
From the Wright Brothers to space flight and from the real world to make-believe (TV/movies, model aircraft) this book will put a few—well, 1001—arrows in your quiver to dazzle and impress at the next cocktail party.
Compiled by eight aviation-minded contributors ranging from pilots to historians to artists, eight different subject areas are mined for particular albeit quite random facts.
All type of flying apparatus and all types of aviation are covered. The multitude of entries obviously does not lend itself to indexing (try finding America’s first female astronaut, #885, a second time!) and the Table of Contents only offers the broadest of outlines so you’ll keep making discoveries pretty much anytime you pick up the book.
Entries range from the properly serious (cf. the Meredith Effect, #868) to the utterly peripheral (cf. the “connection” between drummer Levon Helms and Chuck Yeager, #812) 
Approached with properly dialed-in expectations (meaning: don’t think of it as a potted methodical history of aviation) a book like this has a purpose and, at the very least, is entertaining and a useful reminder of how vast the subject is and, more importantly, how rapid the rate of progress has been.
All entries are necessarily brief but sometimes that brevity shortchanges reality, such as a list of movie stars (#802) that had served in the USAAF containing only three names.
But, again, a book of this type can only scratch the surface and it is obvious that the authors strove for accuracy. If such “1001 Facts” books tickle your fancy, know that the automotive side of this publisher has a whole string of them.
At less than around 2.5 cents a fact you’re definitely getting value!
Copyright 2017, Sabu Advani (speedreaders.info)
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