ADVENTURES IN COURAGE: The Skymasters

Informal anecdotal accounts of six key figures in the development of aircraft add up to an agreeable introduction to the history of flying for middle-aged children. The Montgolfier brothers and Albert Santos-Dumont represent balloonists; Otto Lilienthal improves the glider, is killed advancing to powered flight; the Wright brothers and, later, Lindbergh and Alan Shepard complete the sequence, with a lesser-known Frenchman in between: Louis Bleriot proves the practicality of lightweight monoplane design and the ""tractor"" type propeller, and, to cap a notable career, becomes the first to fly the English Channel. Each is seen benefiting from the work of his predecessors and the author provides, separately, the other connections necessary for understanding specific and general advances. Somewhere between the highly simplified and/or personalized and the quite detailed and technical, you may find a place for this modest, buoyant briefing.