Empires of the Sky
Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World
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“Genius . . . a definitive tale of an incredible time when mere mortals learned to fly.”—Keith O’Brien, The New York Times
At the dawn of the twentieth century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany’s Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world’s first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the remarkable airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades, in the quest to control one of humanity’s most inspiring achievements.
And it was the airship—not the airplane—that led the way. In the glittery 1920s, the count’s brilliant protégé, Hugo Eckener, achieved undreamed-of feats of daring and skill, including the extraordinary Round-the-World voyage of the Graf Zeppelin. At a time when America’s airplanes—rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck—could barely make it from New York to Washington, D.C., Eckener’s airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury. What Charles Lindbergh almost died doing—crossing the Atlantic in 1927—Eckener had effortlessly accomplished three years before the Spirit of St. Louis even took off.
Even as the Nazis sought to exploit Zeppelins for their own nefarious purposes, Eckener built his masterwork, the behemoth Hindenburg—a marvel of design and engineering. Determined to forge an airline empire under the new flagship, Eckener met his match in Juan Trippe, the ruthlessly ambitious king of Pan American Airways, who believed his fleet of next-generation planes would vanquish Eckener’s coming airship armada.
It was a fight only one man—and one technology—could win. Countering each other’s moves on the global chessboard, each seeking to wrest the advantage from his rival, the struggle for mastery of the air was a clash not only of technologies but of business, diplomacy, politics, personalities, and the two men’s vastly different dreams of the future.
Empires of the Sky is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 28, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593155851
- File size: 654714 KB
- Duration: 22:43:59
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 27, 2020
Historian Rose (Men at War) chronicles the early 20th century rivalry between airships and airplanes for the future of commercial air travel in this exhaustive account. Building toward the 1930s showdown between Hugo Eckener, head of Germany’s Zeppelin Company, and Juan Terry Trippe, leader of Pan American Airways, Rose tracks the development of the zeppelin airships and Eckener’s promotion of them as “the silvery herald of global travel” after he took charge of the company from Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1917. Meanwhile, Trippe, a former U.S. Navy pilot, realized that in order to stimulate enough demand to fuel the technological advancements needed to make transatlantic passenger flights possible, an airline needed “to own the exclusive right to operate between given destinations.” He acquired sole landing rights in Cuba, and the first Pan Am flight took off from Key West to Havana in 1927, launching a competition between the industries to win the political and popular support necessary to build fleets and open routes throughout the world. In Rose’s retelling, the fate of the zeppelin was sealed by the rise of the Nazi Party and the 1936 Hindenburg crash, which shifted international interest from airships to airlines. Rose wades deep into minutiae, but maintains a buoyant energy throughout. The result is a dense yet exhilarating history of the dawn of modern air travel.
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