Customer Reviews

Flying High: The Story of Boeing and the Rise of the Jetliner Industry

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Nothing epitomizes modern industry in the United Statesin this century more effectively than the Boeing Company in Seattle. After nearly ninety years it remains the leading builder of transport aircraft in the United States and one of the two most significant in the world. Eugene Rodgers' "Flying High" is a fact-filled, interestingly written, and sometimes insightful popular history of the company started by William Boeing in 1916. Capitalizing on the assistance of normally reticent corporate executives, Rodgers has written an adequate--but nothing more--history of the aerospace giant.

Rodgers concentrates on Boeing's post-World War II airliner business. As such he tells stories of the design and building of jet transports from the 707 to the recent 777. Much of this is well-known, but he turns phrases well and tells illuminating anecdotes. There is only a little new information from corporate elites who provided him information.

As a result, this is far from the final word on Boeing. One looks hard to find systematic analysis of the role of the company in the larger aerospace industry. And almost nothing is said about Boeing's space operations and its systems integration efforts such as the TIE contract with NASA during Project Apollo.

I hope someone will write an honest, insightful history of this enormously significant aerospace corporation. Such an effort would require active support from Boeing leadership, something that does not seem likely in the near term. Would that it were otherwise.

A fine brushstroke look at how Boeing got started, the men who built the company and its entry into the jet age.

This book did not interest me at all. It takes first about 200 pages to come to the most important time for Boeing in the commercial airline industrie and even this is not well documented. Written by someone with obvious no feeling with the airline industrie and could have been well written in no more than 100 pages.

Incredibly boring, uninteresting book. With no experience in the aviation or airline industry, the author relies on few interviews and going through the memoirs of some executives. He has no passion for his subject. It would be an OK book if the author had any writing talent. But he is a lousy writer and it shows on almost every page of this book.

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