The WINGED GOSPEL : AMERICA'S ROMANCE WITH AVIATION, 1900 - 1950

From the day when two bicycle mechanics made the first flight at Kitty Hawk ( lasting 12 seconds and 120 feet ) until after the Second World War, Americans invested extraordinary hopes in airplanes, expecting them to revolutionize daily life and transform the world. ( ... ) Enthusiasts claimed airplanes could improve people's health, refine their aesthetic sensibilities, and even eliminate war. They predicted that soon there would be an airplane in every garage.

The Winged Gospel reconstructs America's first era of manned flight and brings back to life the famous and lesser - known aviators who became the nation's heroes : Charles Lindbergh, whose achievement was the great event of the 1920s... Amelia Earhart, one of the many women " Aces " ( the aviation industry encouraged women because, as pilot Louise Thaden put it, " If a woman can handle a plane, the public thinks it must be ' duck soup ' for men. " )... Calbraith P. Rodgers, who made the first transcontinental flight, surviving a dozen crashes, a broken arm and collarbone, and a score of wounds caused by the metal fragments of an exploded engine... and many others. The book provides a vivid picture of America in the first half of the century - its aspirations and concerns - as expressed in the exuberant and often utopian response to a major new technology.