City of Flight: The History of Aviation in St. Louis

From time to time, in the body of scholarly writing, there emerges a work of commanding importance. Sometimes this paper will do more than satisfy a committee; sometimes it will go beyond a noble contribution to the sum of our knowledge and will also entertain the reader. Occasionally it will be couched in plain, easy-to-understand journalism, designed to captivate a person with a sense of being there. City of Flight is all of this. James J. Horgan transports his reader into history; into the basket of the Atlantic, as the 19th century balloon crashes into the timber of upstate New York, a thousand miles after its takeoff from St. Louis. Into the Red Devil, as Thomas Scott Baldwin flies his flimsy biplane between the Mississippi River and the arches of Eads Bridge. Onto the struts of the Sky Cycle, as a 15 year-old boy pedals his little gas-filled dirigible over Forest Park. Onto Art Hill, to cheer the flyover of America's newest hero, Charles A. Lindbergh, in his Spirit of St. Louis, in salute to the city which made it all possible. This is an epic set in the very cradle of aviation history--the City of St. Louis -- now, as it was in the beginning, the City of Flight.