Welcome aboard, ladies and gentleman, this is your librarian writing on behalf of National Aviation Day, celebrated on August 19th. My angle of attack for today’s column is to provide a cockpit view of American aviation history through books. This is a topic near and dear to me for several reasons. Growing up, I heard stories about my grandfather’s and great uncles’ experiences flying planes during the early days of aviation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. When I was a teenager, I cheered on my dad and my brother while they took flying lessons. During my college years, I worked in the accounting department of an airline and as a receptionist at a Grand Canyon air tour company. Now, several decades later my husband is a retired pilot, having spent over thirty years in the skies.
The thought that I might get my own pilot’s license was brief: one flying lesson convinced me that books would be my future - not runways. Never mind, because I’m still a great fan of all things aeronautic.
I hope you’ll find reading inspiration from one or more of today’s aviation-related book recommendations. Did you know that Vancouver, Washington has its own rich history in aviation? Be sure to check out the title about Pearson Field Airport, one of the oldest continuously operating airfields in the United States.
On that note. . .
Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure that your bookmarks are in their full upright position. Thank you for flying – er - reading this column.
- Aircraft: The Definitive Visual History published by Dorling Kindersley
- The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight by Winston Groom
- A Century Airborne: Air Trails of Pearson Airpark by Jon Walker
- The Great Air Race: Glory, Tragedy, and the Dawn of American Aviation by John Lancaster
- Imagine a City: A Pilot’s Journey Across the Urban World by Mark Vanhoenacker
- The Nation’s Hangar: Aircraft Treasures of the Smithsonian from the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center by F. Robert van der Linden
New at the Library
Fiction
- Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto
- A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson
- Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal
Nonfiction
- The House of Beckham: Money, Sex, and Power by Tom Bower
- Outside In: Interiors Born from Nature by Brian Paquette
- When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders by Howard Blum
Children
- Sports Cars of Tomorrow by Mae Respicio
- We are Definitely Human written and illustrated by X. Fang
- Wild Wave by W. R. Philbrick
This is just a small sampling of the many new titles added each week to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District collection. Visit the district’s 15 locations, our website at www.fvrl.org, or call (360) 906-5000 to reserve titles or find additional listings.
You can email Jan at readingforfun@fvrl.org.
