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

Professor Robert Wohl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1996

In the decades following the First World War, when aviation was still a revelation, flight was perceived as a spectacle to delight the eyes and stimulate the imagination. Robert Wohl takes us back to this time, recapturing the achievements of pioneering aviators and exploring flight as a source of cultural inspiration in the United States and Europe. Wohl begins the story of aviation in this era with a fresh account of Charles Lindbergh's dramatic New York-Paris flight in 1927, then goes on to discuss how Mussolini identified his fascist regime with the modernist cachet of aviation. Wohl shows how the Hollywood film industry - aided by such director-flyers as William Wellman, Howard Hawks, and Howard Hughes - created the aviation film; how writers such as Antoine de St-Exupery helped foster France's self-image as "the winged nation"; and how the spectacle of flight reached its tragic apotheosis during the bombing campaigns of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Generously illustrated with rare photographs, paintings, and posters, this book offers a gripping account of aviation and its hold on the popular imagination during the first half of the twentieth century. "Wohl's enduring contribution is to analyze these promiscuous twentieth-century combinations of technology, art, nationalism, and spectacle, and to do so with unrivaled knowledge and remarkable insight." Peter Fritzsche, author of A Nation of Fliers

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A cultural history of the early years of aviation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Robert Wohl is Distinguished Professor of History, University of California at Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300068875
• ISBN-13: 978-0300068870
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,961,321 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!