Clipping the Clouds: How Air Travel Changed the World

by Marc Dierikx

Overview

Mixing in elements of pop culture, Dierikx provides a chronological history of the evolution of air travel. He covers the significant challenges and developments in air transportation for a specific period, starting with how and why aviation came to play an important role in international politics and economic relations. He follows with an examination of how improvements in technology influenced existing concepts of distance, created new travel patterns, and what effect the growth in numbers of passenger and cargo had on air transportation. Finally, Dierikx looks at how airlines have become increasingly detached from national interests and state control, concluding with an overview of the current state of air travel, and a description of the role air transportation played in the creation of a global society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313059452
Publisher:	ABC-CLIO, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/30/2008
Series:	Moving through History: Transportation and Society Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	317 KB

About the Author

MARC DIERIKX is Program Director of Development Cooperation Studies at the Institute of Netherlands History, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, The Hague, Netherlands. He has written numerous books and articles on air travel, airlines, and airports, including: Fokker: A Transatlantic Biography, and An Image of Freedom: The Netherlands and the United States, 1945 to the Present.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: Heroics Flying as an Icon of the Modern Age, 1919-1945
Chapter Two: Technology Air Transport around the World, 1945-1961
Chapter Three USAGE: The Rise and Fall of the Jet Set, 1961-1977
Chapter Four EFFECTS: Global Travel for All, 1977
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

The author correctly shows how the entwining of technology and public acceptance of the development of range and economy in airlines, together with the lowering of fairs by the introduction of coach/economy class in the late 1950s, followed by the development of intercontinental jets, led to a tremenduos jump in passengers carried. There is no comparable work, for boths its narration and bibliography. Highly recommended. All leves/libraries.” —Choice

“Clipping the Clouds fills a gap on aviation travel for business or college libraries, because few books have been written on the topic during the last decade.” —Army History

“World historians, in particular, would do well to read this book.” —The Historian

From the Publisher