The nations’ airy navies

When in 1890 Captain A. T. Mahan, United States Navy, produced his book on The Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783, it made a world-wide sensation and had important historical consequences; both Germany and Japan took note, and set out to build great navies. There is now room for a book on the influence of air power on history. It needs to be said early that Mr Budiansky has not written it; he has written instead, as an American journalist should, a collection of gripping anecdotes about the results, largely military, of the Wright brothers’ proof in 1903 that a heavier-than-air machine could fly.

He presents a mass of material, unusually well illustrated — both by photographs and by numerous drawings of aircraft profiles — and clearly set down. He touches on service politics, particularly in the United States, and has plenty of service anecdotes, sometimes in the full brutality of fighting men’s slang.