Publishers Weekly
04/04/2022
The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair showcased dazzling technological and scientific advances and “frightening new political philosophies,” according to this eye-opening account. High school history teacher Hanna (Rendezvous with Death) draws vivid profiles of aeronautical innovators who attended the fair (official motto: “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms”), including Italo Balbo, Italy’s dashing chief of aeronautics and a dedicated Fascist; Hugo Eckener, designer and captain of the massive Graf Zeppelin airship, who sought to make a “final public display of his contempt for Nazism”; and the husband-and-wife team of Auguste and Jean Piccard. Fairgoers witnessed such astonishing sights as Balbo’s air armada of 24 seaplanes splashing down in Lake Michigan; the arrival of Eckener’s Graf Zeppelin, piloted in a pattern intended to hide the Nazi swastika on the stabilizing fin from the crowd below; and the Piccards’ high-altitude ballooning. But the feats of Balbo and Eckener also provided propaganda coups for Mussolini and Hitler, Hanna notes, and with the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and the outbreak of WWII in 1939, the sights and sounds of innovative aircraft became linked “with death and destruction meted out from the sky.” Interweaving colorful anecdotes and incisive cultural analysis, this entertaining history strikes a cautionary note about the promise and peril of technology. (June)
From the Publisher
David Hanna’s splendid Broken Icarus is about a gleaming future that never happened. The World’s Fair in Chicago in the fateful year of 1933 marked the zenith of the Golden Age of aeronautics, the moment when it seemed that soon sleek flying-boats would rule the air, silvery squadrons of airships would girdle the world, and mankind would venture into space. But all those hopes, and all those dreams, turned to ashes as that benighted decade forged a very different and more sinister world.” – Alexander Rose, author of Empires of the Sky
“Broken Icarus is more than a book about science, industry, and aviation. It captures the spirit of a time that is both a cautionary tale and an inspiration for us all.” – Bertrand Piccard, chairman, Solar Impulse Foundation
“Broken Icarus weaves a seemingly incongruous story of Europe and America's aspirations for the future – on earth and in the heavens. For some this meant fascism, for others a democratic future powered by flying machines. Women's rights and lives were very much at the center of this search for equality on the ground as in the air. David Hanna shows us how aviation was one way women reached for the stars.” – Lisa Greenwald, author of Daughters of 1968: Redefining French Feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement
“David Hanna brings the exceptional yet all-too-human stories of Balbo, Eckener, and the Piccard’s vividly to life as they pursue their innovations and grapple with, avoid, or embrace the rise of fascism. The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair (itself a fascinating story) provides the perfect international stage to demonstrate their visions of the future. Broken Icarus is a captivating story that features remarkable characters and gripping adventures during exceptionally challenging times.” – Paul Glenshaw, co-director, co-writer, The Lafayette Escadrille
"The echoes of current life in Hanna’s account are unavoidable—'Coverage of giant rallies, and an endless barrage of chauvinism, half-truths, and outright lies poured forth from cheap new mass-produced radios,' he writes of Germany under the newly ascendant Hitler—but where our 21st century hangs helplessly between crisis and stasis, here the 1930s are self-consciously dynamic." —Tom Scocca (Air Mail)
"David Hanna’s historical study is lively, exciting, and a cautionary tale for our troubled times." —Carl Rosen (New York Magazine)
“Hanna’s book terrifically complements Alexander Rose’s Empires of the Sky”...“Like The Devil in the White City, David Hanna’s Broken Icarus often reads like a novel, rich in memorable characters."-Chicago Review of Books
"A really fascinating book." - Paul Lisnek WGN Radio
