A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918 [Hardcover]

Professor Robert Wohl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 1994

The invention of the aeroplane was both the realization of an age-old human fantasy and a portent of a great new future. This book - a cultural history of the pioneering phase of aviation - tells the story of the ways in which powered flight captured the imagination of writers, artists, and intellectuals and helped to shape new visions of the world. Prize-winning historian Robert Wohl describes the colourful early aeronauts: the brilliant, taciturn Wilbur Wright, who arrived in France to demonstrate his invention to a sceptical audience and soon became their idol; Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian expatriate and dandy who delighted the Parisian public by landing his dirigible in front of his house on the Champs-Elysees; and Louis Bleriot, the first man to fly across the English Channel. He then looks at responses to the development of the flying machine by such writers and artists as H.G. Wells, Emile Driant, Franz Kafka, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Edmond Rostand, F.T. Marinetti, Vasily Kamensky, Kazimir Malevich, and Robert Delaunay, showing how the responses ranged from celebration of flight to dire warnings of its military implications. Finally he explores the creation of the flying ace, the knights-errant of the sky, analyzing how such men as Roland Garros, Oswald Boelcke, Manfred von Richthofen, and Georges Guynemer became famous, how they came to terms with their deadly pursuit, and how they were mythologised after their deaths. Generously illustrated with rare photographs, drawings, paintings, and posters, the book evokes an era of pride, power, and endless possibility, when the sky first became a new frontier.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wohl, a history professor at UCLA, has written the first cultural history of early aviation, bringing into sharp focus its impact on Western culture during the decade 1908-18. Illustrated with 300 rare photos, paintings, drawings and posters, including more than 100 in color, this large-format book reveals the powerful effect of aviation imagery on the popular imagination, the mythologizing of the "flying aces" of the Great War and the far-reaching implications for the new century's artistic and moral sensibility. Examples show how the invention of the flying machine inspired a generation of artists and writers including H.G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Edmond Rostand, Kazimir Malevich, Robert Delaunay and many others. Wohl (The Generation of 1914) emphasizes the centrality of France in pre-1918 aviation; the first aviation competition, flight training school and major manufacturing plant for planes were located there. Exhilarating to read and pleasing to the eye.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Robert Wohl is Distinguished Professor of History, University of California at Los Angeles. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 30, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300057784
• ISBN-13: 978-0300057782
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,072,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book--and misunderstood by Wantagh reviewer., May 13, 2004

By 

christopher wren "christopher_wren" (Denver, Colorado United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918 (Paperback)

I'd give this book 4 1/2 stars--higher than the Wantagh reviewer, who just factually (but grossly) misunderstands what the book intends to do. The book is not a history of aviation and whose patents and business ventures succeeded or failed. Rather, Wohl offers a beautifully illustrated, provocative analysis of how the advent and early development of flight worked upon the visual arts, literature, concepts of distance and xenophobic notions of national security. This focus comes out clear in the very title, which notes a relation between "Aviation and the Western Imagination." Wohl has found a great topic and his exploration of it presents us with a rich discussion of the links between culture and technology, between machine and imagination. So Wohl is not to be scolded for misinterpreting or omitting this or that avionics pioneer, for he is laying out how we as culture (not as meticulous researchers) assimilated this incredible new contraption, the airplane. Wohl poses no misinterpretations or bad emphases; his subject is not who did more for the science or its commercial applications, but who and what ended up on canvases, in music, and in bookstalls.

His chapters on art--the suprematist Malevich, the colorful effusions of Robert Delauney--demonstrate how flight literally altered methods of depicting space and motion, not just how airplanes entered artworks. He offers similar insights concerning literature, both high and popular, and throughout illustrates his suggestions with abundant art reproductions, photos, and extended primary source quotations. The book is probably the only think-piece I own that could be mistaken for a diverting coffee-table book. I mean that as a compliment, for the volume is both attractive and searching, and always engaging.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost a complete work, August 19, 2003

By 

JFS Films (Wantagh, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918 (Paperback)

Wohl's "A Passion for Wings" is a comprehensive look at early aviation history and those who made it happen. His tales from France and Germany leading up to, and during, the Great War are fine. Unfortunately, in treating the American aviation community, Mr. Wohl dwells too much on the Wright brothers at the expense of Glenn H. Curtiss and Alexander Graham Bell who, together, came up with a 'solution' to the 'flying problem' completely independent of Wilbur and Orville. Mr. Bell suggested, and Mr. Curtiss first utilized, ailerons instead of the Wrights' inherently unstable and dangerous 'wing-warping' technique.

During the period of 1908 though the start of WWI, the greatest blight on the nacent aviation industry was the Wrights' rabid patent infringement attack on Curtiss and Bell. By avoiding discussion of this omnipresent story of the time, Wohl completely misses one of the key issues of the day. His mistreatment of Curtiss is glaring given the fact that the U.S. Army purchased thousands of Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" aircraft to train their pilots, while the Wrights were completely out of the airplane manufacturing business by 1912!