Back Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight (eBook)

Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight (eBook)

Sixty vivid and compelling pieces, ranging from the era of balloon flight to the Space Age More

Edited by Joseph J. Corn

“A rich sampling of the best accounts of the thrill of flight from those who fly, and those who only dream of it. Dip in anywhere and enjoy!”—Tom Crouch, National Air and Space Museum

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Influences Lev Grossman on Ernest Hemingway, verbal membrane, and The Sun Also Rises
December 29, 2020

Story of the Week A. I. Root, “The First Successful Trip of an Airship”
September 20, 2019

Story of the Week Mary H. Myers, “Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut”
March 21, 2019

This Library of America eBook is available for Kindle, Nook, Google Books, Apple Books, and Kobo.

Now that flying has become routine ––an affair of tray tables, carry-ons, and Homeland Security checkpoints––it is easy to forget that little more than a hundred years ago, every attempt to build a working airplane had failed and space travel was inconceivable except as fantasy. Realizing the dream of flight required astonishing ingenuity, daring, and heroic sacrifice. Each advance opened new and scarcely imaginable vistas, transforming not only distance but war, commerce, and our sense of our place in the universe.

Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Americans in the air, gathering sixty of the most vivid and compelling pieces on aviation and spaceflight, from Benjamin Franklin’s letters on the first balloons to Chris Jones’s account of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. Here are those who made flight happen: Orville and Wilbur Wright, self-taught pioneers whose home-spun inventions stunned the world; World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose memoirs (excerpted here for the first time from the original manuscript) describe the frightening novelties of aerial combat; and daredevils like Texas barnstormers Hart Stilwell and Slats Rodgers and test pilot Jimmy Collins. Ernest Hemingway offers a vivid dispatch on a 1922 flight over France, and Gertrude Stein muses on the look of America from the air; Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart narrate their groundbreaking transatlantic flights; Ralph Ellison tells the story of an African American airman at Tuskegee; William F. Buckley Jr. recounts his mishaps as an amateur pilot; Wernher von Braun envisions a space station of the future, and astronauts John Glenn, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin provide firsthand recollections of the conquest of space. Here, too, are scenes and episodes in the development of commercial aviation, from the hiring of the first stewardesses and the high-stress lives of air traffic controllers to the new ubiquity of what Walter Kirn calls “Airworld.” Included are thirty-two pages of photographs, some previously unpublished.

Joseph J. Corn, editor, is a social and cultural historian who taught at Stanford University. He is the author of The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation and User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers.

This special hardcover publication features acid-free paper and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.

Project support for this volume was provided by: The J. Aron Charitable Foundation, Inc.
News & Views

Influences Lev Grossman on Ernest Hemingway, verbal membrane, and The Sun Also Rises
December 29, 2020

Story of the Week A. I. Root, “The First Successful Trip of an Airship”
September 20, 2019

Story of the Week Mary H. Myers, “Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut”
March 21, 2019

News Lary Wallace: How Fort Dix prepared Michael Herr for Dispatches
July 27, 2016
Table of Contents

Introduction by Joseph J. Corn

Benjamin Franklin | On the First Balloons
“Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut” (Mary H. Myers) | from Aerial Adventures of Carlotta; or, Sky-Larking in Cloudland
A. I. Root | from Gleanings in Bee Culture
Henry Helm Clayton | from A Record-Breaking Balloon Voyage
Orville and Wilbur Wright | The Wright Brothers’ Aëroplane
Ida M. Tarbell | Flying—A Dream Come True!
Glenn L. Martin | Aviator Tells New Terrors for Armies
Eddie Rickenbacker | Notes on War Experiences
Bogart Rogers | from A Yankee Ace in the RAF
Ernest Hemingway | A Paris-to-Strasburg Flight Shows Living Cubist Picture
Hart Stilwell and Slats Rodgers | Air Circus
J. Herman Banning | The Day I Sprouted Wings
Gilbert Seldes | Transatlantic
Charles A. Lindbergh | from The Spirit of St. Louis
Harry Crosby | from Shadows of the Sun
Hawthorne C. Gray | Eight Miles—Straight Up!
Amelia Earhart | Across
Waldo Frank | from The World from the Air
Ruth Nichols | from Atlantic Takeoff
Francis Vivian Drake | Air Stewardess
Elizabeth M. Bisgood | Twelve Strangers in the Night
Wolfgang Langewiesche | Knapsack of Salvation
Gertrude Stein | from Everybody’s Autobiography
Jimmy Collins | from Test Pilot
Anne Morrow Lindbergh | Flying Again
John Dos Passos | The Campers at Kitty Hawk
Alma Hefl in | from Adventure Was the Compass
Mary Lee Settle | from All the Brave Promises
Alvin Kernan | from Crossing the Line
Ralph Ellison | Flying Home
Bert Stiles | First Mission
Beirne Lay Jr. | from I’ve Had It
Samuel Hynes | from Flights of Passage
Guy Murchie | from Song of the Sky
William F. Buckley Jr. | Six Freshmen and an Ercoupe
Ernest K. Gann | from Fate Is the Hunter
Chuck Yeager | from Yeager: An Autobiography
James Salter | from The Hunters
Wernher von Braun | from Crossing the Last Frontier
Jonathan Norton Leonard | from Flight into Space
William H. Rankin | from The Man Who Rode the Thunder
Tom Wolfe | from The Right Stuff
Richard Bach | from Stranger to the Ground
John Glenn | from John Glenn: A Memoir
Rinker Buck | from Flight of Passage
Michael Collins | from Carrying the Fire
Jack Broughton | from Thud Ridge
Michael Herr | from Dispatches
Gene Kranz | from Failure Is Not an Option
Norman Mailer | from Of a Fire on the Moon
Buzz Aldrin | from Magnifi cent Desolation
Gordon Baxter | Big Sky
Diane Ackerman | from On Extended Wings
Sherman Baldwin | The Iron Maiden
Laurence Gonzales | Starduster
Darcy Frey | from Something’s Got to Give
William Langewiesche | The Turn
Walter Kirn | from Up in the Air
Mark Bowden | from “The Kabul-ki Dance”
Chris Jones | Home
Contributors

Diane Ackerman
Buzz Aldrin
Richard Bach
Sherman Baldwin
J. Herman Banning
Gordon Baxter
Elizabeth M. Bisgood
Mark Bowden
Werner von Braun
Jack Broughton
Rinker Buck
William F. Buckley Jr
Henry Helm Clayton
Jimmy Collins
Michael Collins
Harry Crosby
John Dos Passos
Francis Vivian Drake
Amelia Earhart
Ralph Ellison
Waldo Frank
Benjamin Franklin
Darcy Frey
Ernest K. Gann
John Glenn
Laurence Gonzales
Hawthorne C. Gray
Alma Heflin
Ernest Hemingway
Michael Herr
Samuel Hynes
Chris Jones
Alvin Kernan
Walter Kirn
Gene Kranz
William Langewiesche
Wolfgang Langewiesche
Beirne Lay Jr
Jonathan Norton Leonard
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Charles A. Lindbergh
Norman Mailer
Glenn L. Martin
Guy Murchie
Mary H. Myers aka Carlotta, The Lady Aeronaut
Ruth Nichols
William H. Rankin
Eddie Rickenbacker
Bogart Rogers
A. I. Root
James Salter
Gilbert Seldes
Mary Lee Settle
Gertrude Stein
Bert Stiles
Hart Stilwell & Slats Rodgers
Ida M. Tarbell
Tom Wolfe
Orville & Wilbur Wright
Chuck Yeager

List Price: $19.99

Or buy from our partners

Buy the eBook

ISBN: 978-1-59853-108-4 704 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

Related Books

Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology

A. J. Liebling: World War II Writings LOA N°181

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight (eBook)

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.