Winter Reading Club
A Few Colorful Aviation Books to Keep the Winter Blues at Bay…
By S. Mark Rhodes
The Art of the Airways(Zenith Press) is a handsome coffee-table book whose appeal might stretch beyond the garden-variety aviation enthusiast. This work is a chronicle and celebration of airline poster imagery and advertising from the golden age of commercial flight. The work provides some background on the history of these posters, which appeared roughly at the same moment as the first commercial flights. Author Geza Szurovy’s fascinating essays help put the art and advertising in context with artistic movements and technological advancements such as the development of color lithography which made the production of high quality posters easy, and while not cheap, affordable for most of the airlines. This work has a great selection of vintage posters that would appeal to the art aficionado as well as collectors of commercial art and advertising. It also has interesting information about collecting these posters, many of which remain rare and highly coveted by collectors. (www.zenithpress.com)
War in Pacific Skies (Zenith Press) is a similarly artistic endeavor, which covers the most well-known air battles in the Pacific during World War II with the twist of using rare photographs, new first person accounts, and the crisp, striking artwork of Aviation artist Jack Fellows (www.jackfellows.com). This work is a solid piece of World War II buff catnip but it really pops because of Mr. Fellows’ artwork, which raises the profile of the book and makes the work more interesting than the usual WWII themed book.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century-The Complete Newspaper Dailies Vol. 4: 1934-1935(Hermes Press) is one of a series of reprints of the historic comic strip series begun more than 80 years ago that bridged late 19th and early 20th century literary science fiction (as practiced by masters such as H. G. Wells) and early comic book themes. Rogers was a 20th century man who fell asleep for almost 500 years awakening in the 25th century to a world where space travel, jet packs and laser guns were as common as cell phone, I-Pads and Starbucks are in our young century. The Buck Rogers strip and the Buck Rogers character was, by all accounts, a big influence on the development of jet age aviation and the idea of space exploration. The reprints here are crisply reproduced in this handsome volume and the sexual tension between Buck and his colleague Wilma Deering is surprisingly modern in tone. (www.hermespress.com)
DC-3 A Legend in Her Time: A 75th Anniversary Photographic Tribute(Roundup Press) is a loving appreciation of the versatile, historic and enduring aircraft. Author, photographer and pilot, Bruce McAllister (www.wingsalcan.com), explores the mythology and allure of the Douglas DC-3, a plane that was both a workhorse and a glamorous symbol of the romanticism of flight.
