Thomas Kessner

The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the American Aviation by Thomas Kessner

★★★★

While I know of Lindbergh’s achievement (who doesn’t?), I knew nothing about the man or what it took to get him into the air. My knowledge of aviation is very limited. This book was a great book to start on! It had great information about Charles Lindbergh and plenty of history of flying through the ages. It kept my attention from beginning to end, something many of the history books I’ve read lately have been unable to do. This didn’t read like a textbook and I greatly appreciated that. This is definitely the story of an underdog and a challenge that made him famous.

He would become one of our first modern day celebrities. Long before the Beatles, people from all over the world literally swarmed (and sometimes destroyed his plane in the process) just to get a glimpse of the man that changed the view of aviation forever and it didn’t help that he was handsome and considered the boy next door. But he wouldn’t always be that boy. It was interesting to see a later view of Lindbergh. He dabbled in Nazism, had affairs, and joined large monopolies that would quickly tarnish him. This book did a good job of showing both sides of Charles. If one knows a lot about Lindbergh and aviation, I am sure there is nothing is this book that is jaw-dropping. But if you are new to the subject – this is a good overview of the history of Lindbergh and flying.

My only complaint was the end. With all the detail given to Lindbergh, it seems that the author could have dedicated a bit more to his death and his family. Until I researched, I wasn’t aware of how he died or whether he outlived his wife or anything like that. It talked about his accomplishments, his views towards the end of his life and boom – the book ends with the date he died, nothing more.
… (lisätietoja)

4801. Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, by Thomas Kessner (read 23 Feb 2011) This is a stunning work, and tells very well the story of the fantastic personality LaGuardia was. He was in the House from 1917 to 1933 and was a person who really made things lively there. He lost to a Democrat in 1932 and in 1933 was elected mayor of New York and re-elected in 1937 and 1941. He did superlative work as mayor in the early years but in later years became autocratic and dictatorial. But when he was mayor he kept things in New York lively and always remained personally honest. The book is a bit too long, and not quite as chronological as I like a biography to be, nor does the author appear to have made any effort to weigh the events he relates to the events which occurred in the years after 1947, when LaGuardia died, till 1989, when the book was published. But the book is well worth reading and probably will always be the definitive biography of a toweringly important figure.… (lisätietoja)