Title: Into the blue : American writing on aviation and spaceflight /
Authors: Corn, Joseph J.
Publisher: Library of America,
Year: 2011
Subjects: Raumfahrt (Motiv); Luftfahrt (Motiv); Literatur.; Aeronautics in literature.; Astronautics in literature.; Flight in literature.; American fiction; USA.
Abstract: Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Americans in air and space, gathering sixty of the best eyewitness and participant narratives from Benjamin Franklin's letters on the first hot air balloons to Chris Jones's account of being marooned on the International Space Station. Here are those who made flight happen: Orville and Wilbur Wright, self-taught pioneers whose homespun invention stunned the world; World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose memoirs (excerpted here for the first time in unedited form) describe the frightening novelties of aerial combat; and daredevils like Texas barnstormer 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 reflects on the experience of African American airmen at Tuskegee; William F. Buckley Jr. recounts his mishaps as an amateur pilot; Wernher von Braun envisions a space station of the future, while astronauts John Glenn, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin provide firsthand recollections of the conquest of space. Here too, among many other subjects, 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." A thirty-two-page insert offers photographs, some previously unpublished, of the writers and their crafts. -- Publisher's description.
Contents: On the first balloons / Benjamin Franklin -- "Carlotte, the lady aeronaut" (Mary H. Myers) from 'Aerial adventures of Carlotta; or, Sky-larking in cloudland' -- From 'Gleanings in bee culture' / A.I. Root -- From 'A record-breaking balloon voyage' / Henry Helm Clayton -- The Wright brothers' aëroplane / Orville and Wilbur Wright -- Flying, a dream come true! / Ida M. Tarbell -- Aviator tells new terrors for armies / Glenn L. Martin -- Notes on war experiences / Eddie Rickenbacker -- From 'A Yankee ace in the RAF' / Bogart Rogers -- A Paris-to-Strasburg flight shows living cubist picture / Ernest Hemingway -- Air circus / Hart Stilwell and Slats Rodgers -- The day I sprouted wings / J. Herman Banning -- Transatlantic / Gilbert Seldes -- From 'The Spirit of St. Louis' / Charles A. Lindbergh -- From 'Shadows of the sun' / Harry Crosby -- Eight miles -- straight up! / Hawthorne C. Gray -- Across / Amelia Earhart -- From 'The world from the air' / Waldo Frank -- From 'Atlantic takeoff' / Ruth Nichols -- Air stewardess / Francis Vivian Drake -- Twelve strangers in the night / Elizabeth M. Bisgood -- Knapsack of salvation / Wolfgang Langewiesche --