|9780822947608|Aviation and the Modernization of Mexican Identity, 1928-1960|The development of aviation in Mexico reflected more than a pragmatic response to the material challenges brought on by the 1910 Revolution. It was also an effective symbol for promoting the aspirations of the new elite who attained prominence during the war and who fixated on technology as a measure of national progress. The politicians, industrialists, and cultural influencers in the media who made up this group molded the aviator into an avatar of modern citizenship. The figure of the pilot as a model citizen proved an adept vessel for disseminating the values…

|9780822985068|A History of All American Aviation, 1937–1953|This book chronicles the history of All American Aviation of western Pennsylvania, a commercial airline pioneer. The brainchild of self-styled inventor Dr. Lytle S. Adams and Richard C. du Pont, the company began as an airmail delivery carrier, taking advantage of the Experimental Air Mail Act passed by Congress in 1938. The Airway to Everywhere relates the exciting early days of airmail delivery—hair-raising tales of courageous pilots who scooped mail bags tethered to wires strung between poles on makeshift airfields. The story of this airline is placed within the context a typical twentieth-century American…

|9780822944652|Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe| The hot-air balloon, invented by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, launched for the second time just days before the Treaty of Paris would end the American Revolutionary War. The ascent in Paris—a technological marvel witnessed by a diverse crowd that included Benjamin Franklin—highlighted celebrations of French military victory against Britain and ignited a balloon mania that swept across Europe at the end of the Enlightenment. This popular frenzy for balloon experiments, which attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, fundamentally altered the once elite audience for science by bringing aristocrats and commoners together. The Imagined Empire…