Sunday, April 17, 2011

Come Fly With Me

The golden age of flying was set off in 1927 by Charles Lindberg and carried on by Emelia Erhardt and others.  I have a few books from this era when flyers were devising new adventures.

1.  Gods of Tin: The Flying Years, James Salter (2004).  Salter graduated from West Point in 1945 and entered the Army Air Force, (later the U.S. Air Force).  A short gem of a book with memoirs from his training, that included losing his way over Pennsylvania and crashing into a house in Massachusetts.  He went onto to fly a tour of duty (100 missions) in Korea in F-86s.  Bought the book new from the author with his inscription during a book night of authors and maybe one of the best nights of my life.

Gods of Tin: The Flying Years

2.  The Flying Carpet, Richard Halliburton (1932).  In 1931, adventurer--writer Halliburton hired a professional aviator to fly him around the world in an open cockpit bi-plane. In 18 months, Halliburton circumnavigated the globe, covering 33,660 miles and 34 countries.  Bought used.  Book shows a stamp inside showing it was originally sold byR.H. Hays and Bros. Hagerstown, MD.

The Flying Carpet

3.  North to the Orient, Anne Morrow Lindbergh with Maps by Charles A. Lindberg (1935).  Also set in 1931, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh set off on a flight to Asia by way the Great Circle Route, a route used today by commercial airlines. Gracefully written by Anne Morrow Lindberg, a poet at heart. Inside the book, the former owner's book plate reads, "One the Books Belonging to to Carrie Atkinson (1936).  The plates shows a poor soul in a stockade for not returning books.

North to the Orient (Harbrace Paperbacks Library)

4.  South by Thunderbird, Hudson Strode (1937).  Still need to read this one.  Bought used. 

5.  First Across!  The U.S. Navy's Transatlantic Flight of 1919, Richard K. Smith (1973).  In the same year Lt. Colonel Dwight Eisenhower lead the firs US Army convoy across crude roads of the continental United States, the U.S. Navy also sent four large flying boats from the Naval Air Station Rockaway in Long Island, New York for Europe.  Bought used State Department book store. 

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