The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920-1950 - Softcover

Wohl, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300122659 ISBN 13: 9780300122657

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

In the decades following the First World War, when aviation was still a revelation, flight was perceived as a spectacle to delight the eyes and stimulate the imagination. Historian Robert Wohl takes us back to this time, recapturing the achievements of pioneering aviators and exploring flight as a source of cultural inspiration in the United States and Europe.

Wohl begins the story of flight in this era with a fresh account of the impact of Charles Lindbergh’s dramatic New York-Paris flight, then goes on to explain how Mussolini identified his Fascist regime with the modernist cachet of aviation. Wohl shows how the Hollywood film industry―drawing on the talents of such director-flyers as William Wellman and Howard Hawks and the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes―created the aviation film; how writers such as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry helped foster France’s self-image as the “winged nation”; and how the spectacle of flight reached its tragic apotheosis during the bombing campaigns of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Generously illustrated with rare photographs, paintings, and posters and elegantly written, this book offers a gripping account of aviation and its hold on the popular imagination during the years between 1920 and 1950.

About this title

Book Description:

This extraordinary account of the development of aviation takes us from Charles Lindbergh’s dramatic New York-Paris flight to the horrifying bombing campaigns of World War II. Robert Wohl recaptures in words and illustrations an era when a wide-ranging cast of characters among them millionaire Howard Hughes, Italian dictator Mussolini, and architect Le Corbusier fell under aviation’s spell.

From the Author:

A Statement from Robert Wohl

I came to write this book by chance, as so often with the most important things in life. My curiosity about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry led me from Aéropostale and its chroniclers to a larger and even more interesting story: the controversial career of Charles Lindbergh, the embrace of aviation by Mussolini’s Fascist regime, the emergence of the Hollywood aviation film, and the extraordinary range of cultural responses produced by the fear and reality of bombing between 1936 and 1945. These topics, in turn, introduced me to a fascinating and sometimes improbable cast of characters that fell under the spell of aviation, ranging from filmmakers like Howard Hawks and Walt Disney to architects and designers like Le Corbusier and Norman Bel Geddes.

One unexpected benefit was learning how to fly. I realized that I would never be able to understand aviation if I did not subject myself to its rigorous discipline. The hours I spent in the sky only augmented my respect for the men and women about whom I write. I was only too aware that they flew under conditions immeasurably more difficult than those to which I was subjected. It also came as something of a surprise to discover that I began to fly commercially almost exactly at the point at which I end my story. When in 1953 I boarded the aircraft that was going to bear me east to college, I had no idea that one era of flight was coming to an end. For me, it could not have been more romantic.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300122659
• ISBN 13: 9780300122657
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376