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

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As the longtime leader in a predominantly American industry, the Boeing Corporation has experienced a tumultuous succession of ups and downs. In Flying High: The Story of Boeing and the Rise of the Jetliner Industry, author and former university instructor Eugene Rodgers parlays the unusual access he was given to the aircraft firm's internal archives and primary figures into a perceptive, comprehensive behind-the-scenes account of one of this century's most noteworthy companies.

From Publishers Weekly

Rodgers offers this book as an antidote to Robert Serling's Legend and Legacy, which he asserts was Boeing-funded. He covers Boeing's history from its founding just before WWI to the present day. His research is thorough, though the book would have been more readable had he remembered to forget many of the details. Cliches needlessly elongate sentences, as when we're told that a particular deal was done at "cherry blossom time, the most glorious part of the year along the Potomac." Some of the language strikes an incredulous chord: "Boeing was already involved in the ruthless world of Washington, where the only principles held sacred seem to belong to the world of Machiavelli." The engineering of the different aircraft, the competition, the personalities of the executives and the union disputes are all chronicled. Rodgers (Beyond the Barrier) adds a poignant coda to each chapter by incorporating the personal stories of two workers, explaining how the particular events described affected these men.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 502 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; 1st edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871136554
• ISBN-13: 978-0871136558
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,262,847 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Adequate, but only Barely So, May 22, 2004

By	Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A History of Boeing, July 8, 2003

By A Customer

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

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars not a "high flyer", September 9, 1998

By A Customer

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.