2023 Summer
American Aviation: Barnstorming to Mach-1
The summer Chautauqua focuses on five influential individuals.
The resources listed below are available at the J. W. Martin Library or online. Some works from the library collection will be available on-site during the Chautauqua.
Background Reading
These books offer background information and overviews of the subject.
Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation by Call Number: 629.13092 L4933bISBN: 9781574884821Publication Date:Before Amelia is the remarkable story of the world’s pioneer aviatrixes who braved the skies during the early days of flight.
Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis by Call Number: 629.13092 P672cISBN: 9780810905528Publication Date:On , Charles Lindbergh flew his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, from New York to Paris and entered history as the first person to complete a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic.
Flight: 100 Years of Aviation by Call Number: Ref. 629.13 G7676fISBN: 9780789489104Publication Date:The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air & Space Museum maintains the largest collection of air and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight.
The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh & the Rise of American Aviation by Call Number: 629.130092 K486fISBN: 9780195320190Publication Date:In late , an inexperienced and unassuming 25-year-old Air Mail pilot from rural Minnesota stunned the world by making the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A spectacular feat of individual daring and collective technological accomplishment, Charles Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris ushered in America’s age of commercial aviation.
The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright by Call Number: 629.13 W937pISBN: 9781560989387Publication Date:For the first time, nearly seventy of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s published writings are brought together in a single, annotated reference.
The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation, – by Call Number: 629.13 C814wISBN: 9780195041583Publication Date:From the day when two bicycle mechanics made their first flight at Kitty Hawk until after World War 2Ⅱ, Americans have invested extraordinary hopes in airplanes, expecting them to revolutionize daily life and transform the world. This book reconstructs the first era of manned flight, bringing back to life the famous and lesser-known aviators who became America's heroes.
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart (–) was a writer, political activist, and aviatrix. In , she was selected by publisher (and her later husband) George Putnam to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic with pilot Wilmer Stultz. After the flight, she quickly gained celebrity status. In , she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set multiple records and, in , became an advisor to aeronautical engineering at Purdue University. During an attempted circumnavigational flight, she and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on , while en route to Howland Island from Lae, New Guinea. She was presumed dead on . The cause of her disappearance has been the subject of both serious study and wild conjecture.
Books
Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator by Call Number: B Ea72t L.S.ISBN: 9780810970953Publication Date:Amelia Earhart follows the charismatic aviator from her first sight of an airplane at the age of ten to the last radio transmission she made before she vanished. Illustrated with original artwork, contemporary photographs, quotes, and details, this is a great introduction to the famous pilot.
Amelia Lost: the Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Call Number: B Ea72f L.S.ISBN: 9780375945984Publication Date:From the acclaimed author of The Great and Only Barnum—as well as The Lincolns, Our Eleanor, and Ben Franklin’s Almanac—comes the thrilling story of America's most celebrated flyer, Amelia Earhart.
The Last Flight by Call Number: 629.13092 Ea72ℓISBN: 9780517567944Publication Date:Taken from a variety of sources, this is a stirring account of Earhart’s attempt to fly around the world.
The Search for Amelia Earhart by Call Number: 629.13252 G553sPublication Date:Goerner argues for one of the most sensational theories of Earhart’s disappearance: According to him, she detoured to the Marshall Islands during her final flight in order to spy on the Japanese but was captured and tortured to death in Saipan.
Winged Legend: The Story of Amelia Earhart by Call Number: 629.13 B917wPublication Date:Amelia Earhart was the first woman to solo across the Atlantic; she broke transcontinental speed records, was the first to solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City and from Honolulu to the Mainland, and pioneered the airline routes. She lost her last gamble trying to fly around the world at the Equator in a two-engine plane without the navigational aids that became available only a few years later.
Jacqueline Cochran
Jacqueline Cochran (–) was a racing pilot and entrepreneur. She was born Bessie Lee Pittman in Pensacola, Florida, to a family of millwrights. In , she married Robert Cochran and had one son who died in early childhood. After a divorce, she moved to New York City and changed her first name, apparently to distance herself from her family. The wealthy Floyd Bostwick Odlum helped her found a cosmetics business, and she later married him in . Early in the 1930s, she obtained a commercial pilot’s license. She competed in races and by was considered the best aviatrix in the United States. During World War 2Ⅱ, she helped found and served as wartime head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), for which she received a Distinguished Service Medal. On , she flew a Sabre 3 to become the first woman to break the sound barrier. She unsuccessfully ran for congress in . She died at the age of seventy-four in her home in California.
Books
Ladybirds: Women in Aviation by Call Number: 629.13 J114ℓ L.S.Publication Date:Traces the place of women in the history of aviation from the first ladies to go up in balloons in the eighteenth century to the well-known twentieth-century pioneers such as Jacqueline Cochran and Amelia Earhart.
Eula “Pearl” Carter Scott
Eula “Pearl” Carter Scott (–) was a stunt pilot and later legislator. She was born in Marlow, Oklahoma, and later learned to fly under pilot Wiley Post. On
Books
The Oklahoma Aviation Story by Call Number: 629.1309 T583oISBN: 9781885596437Publication Date:To celebrate the centennial of powered flight, this lavishly illustrated history acknowledges Oklahoma’s contributions to this marvelous adventure.
Wiley Post: From Oklahoma to Eternity by Call Number: 629.13092 P8457bISBN: 9781885596451Publication Date:A biography of Oklahoman pilot Wiley Post, who became the first man to fly solo around the world.
Rose Cousins
Rose Agnes Rolls Cousins (–) was the first black woman to become a solo pilot through the Civilian Pilot Training Program. She grew up in Fairmont, West Virginia, where she took an interest in flying from an early age. At sixteen, she attended West Virginia State College, where she was the only woman to enroll in the federally funded Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). She received her license after successfully completing a cross-country solo flight. In , she successfully passed the trials to join the Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black group of pilots for the United States Army Air Forces. She was disallowed from a combat role and afterward was also rejected by the Women Airforce Service Pilots because of her race. That same year, she married Theodore W. Cousins, and they had two children before their divorce in . She was made an honorary member of the Tuskegee Airmen in the 1980s. She died at the age of eighty-six after a decade-long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Books
Black Knights: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen by Call Number: 940.544973 H75bISBN: 9781565548282Publication Date:The story of the men and women who served at Tuskegee Army Air Field from to .
eBooks
Anyone can access eBooks from an NWOSU campus. However, at other locations, you must have a university account.
Tuskegee Airmen by ISBN: 9781541521599Publication Date:The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American combat pilots in U.S. military history. Ride along with these brave pilots on the dangerous military missions that changed the course of history.
Tuskegee Airmen by ISBN: 9780313386855Publication Date:The “Tuskegee Airmen”—the first African American pilots to serve in the U.S. military—comprised the 99th Fighter Squadron, the 332nd Fighter Group, and the 477th Bombardment Group, all of whose members received their initial training at Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama. Their successful service during World War 2Ⅱ helped end military segregation, which was an important step in ending Jim Crow laws in civilian society.
Chuck Yeager
Charles Elwood Yeager (–) was a United States Air Force officer and test pilot. He was born in Myra, West Virginia, and enlisted in the army in . He received flight training after the United States entered World War 2Ⅱ. Stationed in England, he was shot down over France and escaped to Spain, from which he returned to England. After the war, he became the first person to break the sound barrier in while flying an experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane. In , he became commandant of the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School, which trained astronauts for NASA. He commanded a fighter squadron during the Vietnam War and was made a brigadier general in . He continued in the Air Force until his retirement in . In 2012, at age eighty-nine, he broke the sound barrier again in an F-15. He died at age ninety-seven in Los Angeles.
Books
Chuck Yeager: The Man Who Broke the Sound Barrier by Call Number: B Y31ℓ L.S.ISBN: 9780802767813Publication Date:A biography of the Air Force test pilot who in was the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.
The Right Stuff by Call Number: 629.109 W832rISBN: 9780374250324Publication Date:Millions of words have poured forth about man’s trip to the moon, but until now, few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves—in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny emapthetic powers, that made this book a classic.
eBooks
Anyone can access eBooks from an NWOSU campus. However, at other locations, you must have a university account.
Expanding the Envelope: Flight Research at NACA and NASA by ISBN: 9780813158945Publication Date:Expanding the Envelope is the first book to explore the full panorama of flight research history, from the earliest attempts by such nineteenth-century practitioners as England's Sir George Cayley, who tested his kites and gliders by subjecting them to experimental flight, to the cutting-edge aeronautical research conducted by the NACA and NASA.
