Archive for Items Categorized 'Civilian', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Gustav Mesmer, Flugradbauer

by Stefan Hartmaier (editor)

A trilingual story of a German inventor/artist/poet who wants to fly—by means of a human-powered flying bicycle or strapping wings to his back. Don’t laugh. It’s a sad story. Or is it?

The British Overseas Airways Corporation: A History

by Graham M. Simons

BOAC operated from the 1940s to 1974 and the transition from war- to peacetime, and the resulting new world order are important topics even aside from this book’s airline theme.

The Pulitzer Air Races


by Michael Gough 




In the space of only a few years, American flyers in American planes went from footnote to superstars—thanks to a series of races few seem to remember anymore. This is the first book exclusively devoted to them.

British Aviation Posters: Art, Design and Flight

by Scott Anthony and Oliver Green

Illustrated with advertising posters and photos, this book explores the 90-year history of Britain’s national airline from rickety biplane to the Concorde and its place in the world.

Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner

by Jonathan Glancey

You may have missed the memo but within only the last year two major initiatives have been launched to revive supersonic civilian air travel—forty years after Concorde first tested the waters. And we know how that went.

Bill Lancaster: The Final Verdict

by Ralph Barker

Romance. Record-flying. Murder. Acquittal. Fatal plane crash in the desert: accident? suicide? What, you’re still on the fence whether you want to read this book??

World’s Fastest Four-Engine Piston-Powered Aircraft

by Mike Machat

This super sleek photo recon plane did fly faster, higher, and farther than anything else in the sky but the relentless march of progress sidelined it.

Queen of Speed: The Racy Life of Mary Petre Bruce

by Nancy R. Wilson

First to fly from England to Japan, first to cross the Yellow Sea, first woman to circumnavigate the world alone; first, first, first, record, record, record, on sea/air/land. What this lady accomplished in her 95 years on this Earth defies absolutely anything.

X-Planes of Europe: Secret Research Aircraft from the Golden Age 1947–1974

by Tony Buttler & Jean-Louis Delezenne

Showcasing European efforts, the aircraft in this excellent book did by and large not advance into production but some of the technologies they tested did—the lift fan, vectored thrust, supersonic flight, to name a few.

The ATL-98 Carvair: A Comprehensive History of the Aircraft and All 21 Airframes

by William Patrick Dean

Come fly with me—and bring your car along! Or a whale (no kidding)! That’s what the Carvair made possible. A good idea—but what happened to it?

The Art of the Airways

by Geza Szurovy

Award-winning aviation journalist Geza Szurovy has had a life-long love affair with airplanes and he’s even a pilot himself. And because he thinks about the world and the place of everything in it, he connects some interesting dots.

Airplane Racing: A History, 1909–2008

by Don Berliner

Berliner has been writing books and magazine articles about airplane racing for five decades and here gives us a data-packed 260 pages describing more than 187 separate air racing events worldwide. For the time period between 1909 (the first race in France) and 2008 he lists who won each event, what they flew, and what engine twisted the prop.

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