Customer Reviews

FASTER, FURTHER, HIGHER: Leading-edge Aviation Technology since 1945 (Putnam's History of Aircraft)

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This book explained a few things to me, mainly the phenomenon of control reversal that caught out high-mach dives with piston-engined aircraft. Well worth reading for all sorts of reasons, and maybe should be revised for the latest era. I have a technical training in the RAF in engines and found I could understand it all. As the market is saturated with books with little or no technical or scientific content it is nice to read this one which attempts to explain many things without baffling the reader with science.

This volume, one part of an ambitious but never completed dozen volume series on the history of aviation, offers a very different take on a half century of aviation technology progress. Rather than arranging the material by country, type of airplane, or even chronologically, Jarrett and his contributors take a topical overview approach, providing a broad survey of major technical trends. As with the other books in the series, this is serious writing intended for serious readers---by which I mean this is not a "fan" book as are so many books about military aircraft. It is a book of analysis and synthesis that summarizes a vast amount of information in as concise a form as possible. Illustrated with black-and-white photos, chapters review changing technology in the supersonic era, extending range, extending aircraft altitude capabilities, aircraft structures, propulsion, systems and avionics, advanced aircraft in production, the growing role of computers and CAD/CAM technologies in aircraft design, and possible future supersonic transports. Though the book is now nearly a decade old, it holds up markedly well--as do the other five published volumes of "Putnam's History of Aircraft." Would that the series had been completed!