Book to Note

Tom D. Crouch. Lighter than Air. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. 192 pp. $35.

Reviewed by Andrew Mangravite

Lighter Than Air is a well-written, beautifully illustrated short history of lighter-than-air travel, from the first unmanned aerostats to the awe-inspiring rigid-frame airships. Tom D. Crouch shows the original aerostats facing ridicule for failure and punishment for success. He reveals that it wasn’t until the balloon became the airship, with a rigid frame, motors, and the ability to be navigated independent of the wind that it was seen as having a future. Crouch clearly has an affection for this area’s visionaries— like Fra Bartolomeu Laurenco de Gusmao (mockingly called “O Voalor,” The Flying Man), the Montgolfier brothers, and Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin—though his discussion of their work can’t overlook the fragility of the technology upon which their dreams were built.