People of my generation can recall a time when there were so few books on aviation being published that you could, without too much difficulty, buy everything that came out and still not break your budget. Today, there are wonderful books on aviation in the thousands, and you have to choose carefully to avoid going broke at the book store.
Aviation books were different then as well, for they generally addressed wide topics in the manner of Assen Jordanoff's Through the Overcast, James G. Thompson's Aircraft Drafting Room Manual or Claud J. Dry's Aerial Photos — How to Make and Sell Them. The rush started after the Second World War, with first a trickle of books that whetted the appetite. These were led by the Harleyford series from Great Britain, which were well researched and well illustrated for the time. There followed a whole host of books, and today we have a tumultuous stream cascading from publishers, covering virtually not only every subject, but every aircraft.
As a result, even if you have endless funds, you have to be selective, simply because you will otherwise run out of shelf-space (as well as out of the good graces of your spouse.) And while there are more books than ever before, one has to say that for the most part, they are better than ever before in terms of paper quality, illustrations, and the level of research. If anything, there is perhaps a tendency for some authors to become too particularized — to zero in on too small a subject, so that their audience is also necessarily small.
What the Book Is — and Isn't
This book is a compilation of lectures given while the author served as the Centennial of Flight lecturer at the University of Maryland, with some additional material from similar efforts in other venues. It is an excellent short history of aviation, but I believe the title might have been better phrased as exactly that: a short history of aviation rather than the life story of a technology. I base this on the fact that other than a very short six-page introduction and a glossary, the book is more of a brief review of many of the major events in aviation, rather than being focused on the details of the technology of aviation, as the title suggests.
What the Book Does Well
This caveat aside, in eight chapters the author moves swiftly and accurately from the Montgolfiers to a capsule coverage of General Aviation from 1920 to the present. In his coverage of the 1914–1918 air war, Kinney places the greatest emphasis on the fighter plane and the cult of the fighter pilot, with less attention paid to the observation and bomber effort.
Three key chapters illustrate the author's style and the book's strength. In a masterly distillation, he covers the aeronautical revolution from 1918 to 1938, noting the development of the streamlined modern aircraft with its all-metal structure, cantilever wing, enclosed cockpit, radial engines, retractable landing gear and flaps. As he does in each chapter, Kinney associates the evolution of technical achievements and events with relevant books and films. His coverage of World War II in the air parallels the chapter on the 1914–1918 war in that it highlights the aircraft that best illustrate the technological advances. The author then posits that the invention of the jet engine began a second aeronautical revolution, this one extending from 1930 to the present. In each of these three chapters the author's ability to condense important events into simple paragraphs of crisply written sentences is admirable.
The Verdict
This is not a reference book, for the author could not include all the customary exact dates, facts and figures and personality sketches in so succinct a presentation. It is instead a fine way to introduce someone to the broad scope of aviation development. The lectures-to-book format shows in places, but Kinney's genuine enthusiasm for his subject carries the reader through. For anyone seeking a single-volume introduction to a century of flight — from the Montgolfiers' balloon to the F/A-22 — this book delivers that efficiently and readably.