Aviation History

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite into orbit around the Earth. Little more than a month later, the Soviets launched Sputnik II. News of Sputnik created panic in Washington, D.C. Within days, the U.S. military began a madcap race to space full of crashes, skullduggery, and backstabbing - until Eisenhower's secret civilian program surpassed the Soviets by putting the first American, a hero monkey named Gordo, into orbit.

This book is the product of The Earhart Project, a thirty-four-year investigation of the Earhart tragedy by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. TIGHAR investigators had no agenda. They were not out to advocate, excuse, honor, or impugn. They saw the Earhart disappearance as an aviation accident and reasoned the answer to its cause and outcome should be discoverable if they could find, assemble, and analyze the relevant data.

In 100 Years of Air Power and Aviation, Robin Higham, regarded by many as the dean of aviation historians, presents a critical history of British, American, Soviet, German, Italian, French, Japanese, and Israeli aviation. He moves easily from theory to concrete example and back again, in the process discussing the social, economic, and political components of air power, the major wars and police actions in which aircraft have been employed, the composition of air forces, and the creation of aviation industries.

Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson led the design of such crucial aircraft as the P-38 and Constellation, but he will be more remembered for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. His extraordinary leadership of the Lockheed "Skunk Works" cemented his reputation as a legendary figure in American aerospace management.

Ken Follett follows his bestsellers Jackdaws and Code to Zero with an extraordinary novel of early days of World War II. It is June 1941 and the war is not going well for England. Across the North Sea, 18-year-old Harald Olufsen takes a shortcut on the German-occupied Danish island of Sande...

Although Orville and Wilbur Wright are celebrated today as heroes for their revolutionary contributions to science and engineering - they are acknowledged as the first men to successfully achieve powered, piloted flight - their success was hard-earned. In fact, it took the self-taught engineers years of work and dozens of crashes before they managed a single 12-second flight! In this first installment of the brand new Epic Fails series, Ben Thompson and Erik Slader take listeners through the Wright brothers' many mishaps and misadventures as they paved the way for modern aviation.

With the Soviet Union's launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the Cold War soared to new heights as Americans feared losing the race into space. The X-15 Rocket Plane tells the enthralling yet little-known story of the hypersonic X-15, the winged rocket ship that met this challenge and opened the way into human-controlled spaceflight. Drawing on interviews with those who were there, Michelle Evans captures the drama and excitement of, yes, rocket science.

Undaunted Valor is the firsthand account of helicopter pilot, Colonel Dan Cory as he flies combat missions in the jungles of Vietnam. From dodging enemy ground fire and RPGs, to constant mortar and rocket attacks on his base, Colonel Cory stared down the enemy to bring his fellow soldiers’ home.

En mai 1927, l'aviateur américain Charles Lindbergh fut le premier à traverser l'Atlantique seul, sans escale et de continent à continent. Cet événement changea le monde, comme plusieurs autres survenus jusqu'en septembre dans son pays natal (dont l'invention du cinéma parlant et de la télévision).

#1 MULTI-MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER A one-of-a-kind portrait of a true American hero: General Chuck Yeager “The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.” General Chuck Yeager was the greatest test pilot of them all—the first man to fly faster than...

In this remarkable WWII story by New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning, a renegade American pilot fights against all odds to rescue his family -- imprisoned by the Japanese--and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way. From the knife fights and smuggling runs of his youth to his...

The #1 New York Times bestseller from David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize—the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly—Wilbur and Orville Wright. On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two...

Operation Chrome Dome uncovers one of the Cold War’s most astonishing and unsettling secrets: for years, the United States kept nuclear-armed B-52 bombers flying around the clock, ready to launch a retaliatory strike at a moment’s notice. This gripping, factual narrative takes readers inside the hidden world of airborne deterrence—where “peace” was protected by aircraft carrying weapons capable of ending entire cities, and where routine missions depended on perfect discipline, flawless technology, and a constant battle against fatigue, weather, and human error.

From the young airmen who took their frail machines high above the trenches of World War I and fought their foes in single combat, there emerged a renowned company of brilliant aces - among them Ball, Bishop, McCudden, Collishaw, and Mannock - whose legendary feats have echoed down half a century. But behind the elite pilots in the Royal Flying Corps, there were many hundreds of airmen who flew their hazardous daily sorties in outdated planes without ever achieving fame.

Just as vital as the battle on land or the struggle at sea, the air war ultimately tipped the balance of power in World War II. Many campaigns rode on the capabilities of their airforce, as British Spitfires were pitted against Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Japanese Zeros. Aerospace expert David Baker explores this battle in the skies, detailing the technical leaps that were made and little-known histories about the men and women involved, from pilots to factory workers.

A captivating and inspiring memoir by Canada's first man in space. On October 5th, 1984, Marc Garneau made history. Blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle and reaching a speed of 28,000 km/hour, he became the first Canadian to fly to outer space. That monumental...

A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 An NPR Book We Love 2025 A History Best Book of 2025 A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2025 A New York Post Best Book of 2025 A New York Times Editors' Choice CBS Sunday Morning Summer Book Report Pick New York Times “Books...

World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy.

In the latest installment of the New York Times bestselling series, a series of possible attacks on British pilots leads Jacqueline Winspear's beloved heroine Maisie Dobbs into a mystery involving First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. October 1942. Jo Hardy, a 22-year-old ferry pilot, is delivering a...

This memoir adventure takes the listener through a twenty year career in naval aviation that included flying attack jets from aircraft carriers, flight instructing, Naval Test Pilot School, experimental and operational flight test, engineering management for F/A-18 aircraft, initial flight test of the Super Hornet aircraft and overseas aircraft maintenance after 11 September 2001. NASA was the start of David's career while working with astronauts and engineers.