Book of Flight: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "SINCE ancient times, people have dreamed of flying like birds..." (more)
Key Phrases: World War, United States, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aviation enthusiasts will also welcome The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Book of Flight by Judith Rinard. Packed with over 400 photographs and illustrations, this informative offering looks at humankind's earliest airborne efforts, including a sidebar about Leonardo da Vinci's famous sketches of "ornithopters," or "flapping-wing machines," and the Wright Brothers' 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk. Later sections focus on postwar barnstormers, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-These large-sized, profusely illustrated surveys cover the same territory, but with very different emphases. Both are organized as sequences of topical spreads, on each of which large pictures of aircraft or spacecraft and smaller scenes or schematics mingle with detailed explanatory captions. Flight, aimed at somewhat less proficient readers, takes an overall subject approach, devoting one section to military uses of flight, four to civil or research aviation, then closing with a gallery of pioneer machines. Its art, which is mostly painted or computer generated, has a clean, uncluttered look. In contrast, The Book of Flight is a photo-documentary, with a chronological structure, more images per page on average, and relatively more space allotted to fighting machines and those designed to travel into space. It focuses largely on the United States's contributions to aviation and astronautics. Flight has but half the page count, but takes a more international view and contains information-on hang gliding, for instance, and NASA's recent cancellation of the X-33 space-plane project-which is missing from the Smithsonian title. The differences between the two books are enough to make them complementary, rather than rival, additions to library collections; consider Flight as a systematic, visually appealing update for older picture albums, and even though there is little new material in The Book of Flight, the dramatic, sharply detailed illustrations make it a viable alternative to Century of Flight (Time-Life, 1999).
John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Firefly Books; illustrated edition edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155209619X
• ISBN-13: 978-1552096192
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,155,256 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)