Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-09-08
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM

/ W. W.
AROUND THE WORLD IN q BAYS:
The Flight CT the Winnie Mae. IL
Illustrated. BY Wiley Post and Harold
Gatty. Introduction by Will Rogers.
Rand Mentally &, Co.
Long cons ahead Of us, the scientists
will be digging up our buried cities
our Londons and Manhattans-to dis
cover the manner of folks we were.
Spademan and glyphman will labor,
sedulously, and long. One, to uncover
the remains of our Babylcnian towers.
The other to interpret the characters
and pictures craven upon them.
And the scientists of that day will
conclude, finally, that along in the
first half Of the twentieth century a
new element entered into the making of
a civilization. 1t was then that man
threw down his challenge to time and
distance. Then that fleets of winged
ships took to the air. Then that surface
fotors learned to spin aC an inconceiV-
able rate. This, too, was the era when
men began to talk across the world to
each ether, with the ease of sitting ON
opposite sides of the same f1reside And
to see one another across great dis
tances. as II they were standing face
to face.
And everywhere among these ruins
one overlapping sign stood out. Char
acterS as mysterious to those investiga-
tors as the Hebraic "SeIah!" is to us.
or the Hindu "Om" "Speed"-that
the sole emblem of this epochal turn in
of that era in each and all Of its as
poets.
Now, after this little run into the far
future. we are back again. Back with
Post and Gatty and Winnie Mae. latest
OF the exemplars OF the great modern
god, Speed"
Round the world in days. Beating
the Zeppelin by Is days. Making Jules
Verne, that fantastic romanticist look
like 80 cents with his tortoise trip of
30 days. And Magellan-but what's the
use! Let us not be nasty just because
we've worked a miracle over the old
tyrant, Time.
Everybody knows now about the ia
nous flight Maybe some have grown
shade tired of it and are already nest
hing about for flyer to white the
Week-and-a-day to even less than that.
That Is not important. There are folks
VINO refuse to be satisfied, particularly
with performances that do not tax
them. All that Is not important.
The outstanding point, right here
OANN AANh' 40 OAAoly oAIiNC IllC dIludl III
umph itself these two men have worked
another speed wonder. They have writ
ten the full story of the great adven-
ture. To them, maybe, a more truly
herculean task than the epic fight it
self uplifted with excitement from first
to last. AS bare fact, these boys must
had fed their book, sheet by sheet,
straight into waiting presses. The good
business acumen of Rand McNally &,
Co. did the rest. And no mean speed
performance this bookmaking.
Well set up in first-class craftsman
ship is the account, even before the
stirring fact itself is cool to the men,
DRY. Turn and turn about, first Post
and then Gatty, the two give, from
start to finish, the saliencies of the
business in hand. How the plan origi-
mated, what in the earlier days of each
led to its acceptance. Then the details
OF getting ready to go. given as simply
as II they had decided TO take a run
over to New York In these prepara-
tons Winnie Mae has the post of honor
And. indeed. in the full course of the
event Winnie Mae proves to be as hu-
man as the other tWo-to one reader at
least-taklng the hazards CALAMITY, just
as the boys did, easing up with a long
breath of relief when air and earth and
sea behaved in friendly and supporting
fashion to this trio of Adventures
''Fool-hardy adventures" the air said
or was 1t the sea, or the long Siberian
land wastes beneath them?
To the initiate there are pages OF
more or less technical stuff, just suited
to their desire and enjoyment But. in
the main, this is book for everybody
reading. Dated laps of the flight are
set down. June "a: from Chester to
Berlin" and so on in a series to Mos
COW. across Asia, then to Fairbanks. to
Edmonton. to New York Each
marked by graphic accounts of its own
special characteristic of advance OF
hold-up. Each made more vivid by
good supplies Of photographs OF place
and incident.
Winnie Macs Log Book" in exact
reproduction gives partaklng sense to
the reader. The map of the full flight
is also one of the features of any travel
book upon which one taking the book
route is deeply dependent. Here is a
very clear and helpful one. The whole
is triumph from beginning to end
The flight, the boys, the book. One to
folk. proud of this Around the World
in Days"
WINGS OF TOMORROW: The Story
of the Autogiro. BY Juan de la
Cierva and Don Rose New York
Brewer, Warren & Putnam.
A few weeks ago, or months, the
press gave attention to fresh lnven-
ton in aeronautics A new device fol
flying, based on a principle hitherto
unused and founded upon promises OF
greater speed. better security and more
definite certaintieS of action than other
airships could guarantee. Then other
things came along and these particular
news items slipped into the background
Wings Of Tomorrow" gives the story
of the autogiro. Gives the record of its
invention and an account Of the young
Spaniard who conceived it and by whose
efforts it was brought to stage OF
practical usefulness. The account reads
more like romance than like the achieve
ments of an aeronautical engineer, since
the author has put himself into the
record. His efforts, his defeats and
failures wrapped, so to speak, in his
personal reactions to these. come to-
gether here in harmony Of effect and In
vivid picture of resistance to final de-
feat. AS a boy this man tinkered with
mechanics, as many boy does. But
this one kept at it, and out of his fuss
ing about there grew notions of certain
stable behaviors under certain condi-
tons. Principles, he called these later
In good description he tells Of his the
DRY of rotating wings, and of what these
might be made to do in the case of the
airship In definite description he tells
this for the use Of the technical man
In fine pictures he gives 1t for the use
of the average reader-the not too aver
age reader When he came to America
naturally Thomas Edison was man
whose opinion was worth-well it was
certainly worth getting If it were pos
sible. That's the answer" said Edison
as he saw the "autogiro climb steeply
and make vertical landing"
The claim for the autogiro by know
ing ones is that it is 1.-The only funda-
mentally new discovery in aeronautics
since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty