Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation - Softcover

Mortimer, Gavin

3.57

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9780802719935: Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802719937 ISBN 13: 9780802719935

Publisher: Walker Books, 2010

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In October of 1910, only four years before the outbreak of World War I, nobody knew whether planes, dirigibles, or balloons would prevail. Within a period of seventeen days, this question was on prime display, as the dirigible America tried to cross the Atlantic; huge crowds gathered at horse-racing tracks to watch airplanes race around overhead; and ballooning teams from around the world took off from St. Louis in pursuit of the Bennett International Balloon Cup, given to the balloon that traveled the farthest. The dramatic denouement would stun the country and lay the foundation for the air force. In Chasing Icarus, Gavin Mortimer has plumbed original and primary sources to paint a vivid picture of the launching point of flight, and an indelible portrait of the late-Edwardian world about to explode into war.

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About the Author:

Gavin Mortimer is the author of The Great Swim. He has written for a wide range of publications, from Esquire to the Daily Telegraph, from BBC History to the Observer. A long distance swimmer, he lives in the south of France.

From The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle In 1910, the year of the events in Gavin Mortimer's "Chasing Icarus," airplanes were still such novelties that there was no universally accepted term for the people who flew them. Among the choices were "birdmen" and "jockeys," but "pilots" had yet to be borrowed from the world of the barge and riverboat. Mortimer's tantalizing subtitle, "The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation," sets up the three events that pilot his book: The dirigible America took off from New Jersey in an attempt to make the first airborne crossing of the Atlantic; a great race called the Gordon Bennett International Balloon Cup started from St. Louis; and aviators vied to outperform one another in flying stunts above Belmont Park in New York. This confluence of events seems to have brought aviation to a kind of critical mass, with reporters and pundits predicting a glorious future for flying machines in both sports and warfare, though not, apparently, in transportation. The little-known heroes of these adventures included the English flier Claude Grahame-White, the Frenchman Jacques de Lesseps (whose father was Ferdinand, builder of the Suez Canal) and the American Arch Hoxsey. Many of the fliers involved died young, in plane crashes, but not Grahame-White. Before his death in 1959, he marveled at how quickly aviation had progressed. Not that long ago, the Soviet Union had sent its first Sputnik into orbit, whereas "the first airplane flight in Europe was as recent as 1906."
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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