A passion for wings: aviation and the western imagination, 1908-1918
1995; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 32; Issue: 08 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5860/choice.32-4476
ISSN1943-5975
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoIn decades following First World War, when aviation was still a revelation, flight was perceived as a spectacle to delight eyes and stimulate imagination. Robert Wohl takes us back to this time, recapturing achievements of pioneering aviators and exploring flight as a source of cultural inspiration in United States and Europe. Wohl begins story of aviation in this era with a fresh account of Charles Lindbergh's dramatic New York-Paris flight in 1927, then goes on to discuss how Mussolini identified his fascist regime with modernist cachet of aviation. Wohl shows how Hollywood film industry - aided by such director-flyers as William Wellman, Howard Hawks, and Howard Hughes - created aviation film; how writers such as Antoine de St-Exupery helped foster France's self-image as the winged nation; and how spectacle of flight reached its tragic apotheosis during bombing campaigns of Spanish Civil War and World War II. Generously illustrated with rare photographs, paintings, and posters, this book offers a gripping account of aviation and its hold on popular imagination during first half of twentieth century. Wohl's enduring contribution is to analyze these promiscuous twentieth-century combinations of technology, art, nationalism, and spectacle, and to do so with unrivaled knowledge and remarkable insight. Peter Fritzsche, author of A Nation of Fliers
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