The WINGED GOSPEL America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950 by Joseph J. Corn

        From the day when two bicycle mechanics made the first flight
at Kitty Hawk (lasting 12 seconds and 120 feet) until after World War
II, Americans invested extraordinary hopes in airplanes, expecting
them to revolutionize daily life and transform the world. For many the
flying machine became a virtual god, the messiah of a modern-day
religion of the machine. Enthusiasts claimed airplanes could improve
people's health, refine their aesthetic sensibilities, and even
eliminate war. The goal was a plane in every garage.

        The Winged Gospel reconstructs America's first era of manned
flight and brings back to life the famous and lesser-known aviators
who became the nation's heroes: Charles Lindbergh, whose achievement
was the great event of the 1920s... Amelia Earhart, one of the many
women "aces" (the aviation industry encouraged women because, as pilot
Louise Thaden put it, "If a woman can handle a plane, the public
thinks it must be 'duck soup' for men.") . . . Calbraith P. Rodgers,
who made the first transcontinental flight, surviving a dozen crashes,
a broken arm and collarbone, and a score of wounds caused by the metal
fragments of an exploded engine . . . and many others. The book
provides a vivid picture of America in the first half of the
century-its aspirations and concerns-as expressed in the exuberant and
often utopian response to a major new technology.

        Joseph J. Corn.  The WINGED GOSPEL: America's Romance with
                Aviation, 1900-1950.  New York, NY:  Oxford University
                Press, 1983. ISBN 0-19-503356-6

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