From The Editor: Armchair Flying

Apparently, it was always this good

By Jeff Berlin

When I was turning 10, my folks took my brother and me to Disney World. It was around my birthday because I remember jumping on the bed in our room in the then-futuristic Contemporary Hotel, excited that I was finally turning double digits. Such innocence, I think now, as I just turned over another new decade not long ago. One of my most enduring memories from that trip is a flying attraction where I stood at a railing, leaned a bit forward and felt wind on my face as I watched images of flight from a bird’s perspective.

September of ’06 saw the theatrical release of Flyboys, a terrific movie about the Lafayette Escadrille, a group of American pilots who flew for France during World War I. As I sat in a screening of that film in New York, during the exhilarating flying scenes that put me in the cockpit with the Escadrille’s brave pilots, I could have sworn that I again felt that wind on my face. Flyboys was a project of passion for Oscar-winning director and producer Tony Bill, who’s written this month’s “Guest Speaker” column.

One of my favorite things about aviation is all the amazing books available about its history. And I’m not talking about the glossy picture books on shelves at your local Barnes & Noble or Borders. I’m talking about books with yellowing pages, brittle leather bindings and blocks of type that sometimes fall askew on the page. I’m talking about original, first-edition copies of the classics.

Whenever I’m back in New York City, I always make sure to stroll the aisles of the famous (in NYC) Strand Books on Broadway and 12th Street. Strand likes to call itself the “Home to 18 Miles of Books,” and it’s my favorite place to get lost for a bit, turning pages while being transported so much farther than 18 miles, which would otherwise put me, perhaps, somewhere on the other side of Secaucus, N.J., which is decidedly less glamorous and dreamy than, say, flying a Nieuport in 1917 or blazing trails in Greenland for Pan American Airways with Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Every so often, a real cloth- or leather-bound gem will end up shoehorned onto the shelves at Strand, like a first-edition Spirit of St. Louis by Lindbergh, a first-edition Stick and Rudder by Langeweische or even a first-edition Fate is the Hunter by Ernie Gann. I now have all of these, among many others, on my shelves at home, and I’m proud of my little collection of first editions, but it’s nothing compared to the collection that Tony Bill recently sold to a library. Tony’s was one of the most significant and complete libraries of early aviation literature. So when Tony recommends a book to me, I check it out. And this month, right here on these pages, Tony gives us all some recommendations of books you probably haven’t heard of. I can guarantee that they’ll be perfect to satisfy your flying bug when the weather outside isn’t cooperating. It works for me.