An informative overview of the Western world's airline industry from the end of WW I through the recent past. Drawing on a voluminous public record and interviews with contemporary sources, Heppenheimer (The Coming Quake, 1988, etc.) offers a down-to-earth account of who and what shaped commercial aviation over the past 75 years. While the feats of Charles Lindbergh captured the public's imagination, he observes, the efforts of pioneering airframe manufacturers to develop better bombers for the US military were of greater significance to fledgling carriers. The author goes on to review concurrent advances in engine design, focusing on the jet-propulsion work done in Nazi Germany as well as the UK, which paved the way for the workhorse airliners and showcase SSTs now in service. Heppenheimer examines the roles played by American suppliers (Boeing, Douglas, GE, Lockheed, Pratt & Whitney, et al.) and the US government in the evolution of the global airline industry. He does the same for such foreign vendors as the state-owned Airbus Industrie, de Havilland, and Rolls-Royce. Covered as well are the instrumentation gains that allow foul-weather as well as night flights, the unintended consequences of deregulation in the US, the state of the art in air traffic control, and what the future might hold for stateside survivors (American, Continental, Delta, United) in an archetypally cyclic business whose costs consistently exceed its revenues. An airworthy briefing firmly grounded in the applied science and allied realities that permit the air transport of passengers and cargo over long distances and high speeds. (8 pages photos, line drawings)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-471-10961-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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