Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.68 (623 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 158333436X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-07 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Verhovek spins a fine yarn that includes big money, war, sex and power." — The Wall Street Journal"Jet Age is a page-turning detective story with characters as finely drawn as those in a work of fiction, and infused with an infectious sense of wonder that drove ordinary men and women to reach for extraordinary heights." — The New York Times. "Breezy and fact-filled historyMr
As the Comet and the Boeing 707 go head-to-head, flying twice as fast and high as the propeller planes that preceded them, the book captures the electrifying spirit of an era: the Jet Age. At the center of this story are great minds and courageous souls, including Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, who spearheaded the development of the Comet, even as two of his sons lost their lives flying earlier models of his aircraft; Sir Arnold Hall, the brilliant British aerodynamicist tasked with uncovering the Comet's fatal flaw; Bill Allen, Boeing's deceptively mild-mannered president; and Alvin "Tex" Johnston, Boeing's swashbuckling but supremely skil
Sam Howe Verhovek has been a reporter for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for more than twenty-five years. . His assignments have taken him around the globe, to riots in India, the war in Iraq, and the longest school bus ride in America. He lives in Seattle
"How global air travel changed forever with jet airplanes" according to Clark. If you are interested in the history of aviation and how jet transportation forever changed our world, this is the book to readand even if you hadn't thought about it, check it out. Global air travel is now taken for granted and this book details the trials and tribulations of those who were in competition to shrink the globe by developing the first jet transport.I took a bit different approach to reading the book, skipping to the end to read about the genesis of the book in the Epilogue. Author Sam Howe Verhovek has conducted exte. Not Bad, but It Strays Pretty Far Afield Terry Sunday Book titles can be deceptive. You might expect Sam Howe Verhovek's "Jet Age: The Comet, the 707 and the Race to Shrink the World" to be about the rivalry between Britain's de Havilland and America's Boeing aircraft companies and the first-generation commercial jet airliners that each built in the early days of the Jet Age. You would be partly right. At least some of the book covers this subject. But much of it does not.One of the forays beyond the subjects mentioned in the title includes quite a bit of coverage about the dawn of fl. "Pretty light stuff" according to Wesley Cosand. This book was interesting but not the book I hoped for.I thought it was a book on how the management and engineering teams at de Haviland and Boeing addressed the technical and business problems of building the Comet and the 707, the first jet airliners. The author spent much more time on the Comet because of its fatal flaws than on the 707 and almost no time on any of the technical issues. More was written about jets in Star Trek than engineering the 707. There was far more about aviation between the World Wars than was necessary