this was AIR TRAVEL - A Pictorial History of Aeronauts and Aéroplanes from the Beginning to Now!

The aeroplane was tethered in a burned-out alfalfa field and it was a wonder to behold. You left your bicycle at the fence and watched one man tighten up the wires that held the machine together as another poured in gasoline from a five-gallon can.

 Questions buzzed in your mind.. does it really stay up in the air? Will the wings flap like a bird? And an hour later, when the plane finally left the ground, the questions were answered and you could hardly wait to get home and tell the folks.

THIS WAS AIR TRAVEL in a wonderful, brave world that Henry R. Palmer, Jr. displays with much joy and affection. It seems incredible so much has happened on the flying fields in one man’s lifetime but here in full, nostalgic glory are the Farmans, Wrights, Dorniers, Sikorskys and Martins which created new thrills in a new industry out of man’s struggle to fly.

Author Palmer has built a rare book of adventure on the airwaves by presenting hundreds of photographs from his collection which has taken him for many years to assemble.

With these is the story of development, told in a crisp, readable style with an appendix for the technical minded. It is your privilege to add all this to your library and save long effort in research.

Here are the gas bags and gyrocopters… the ‘Char-a-banc’ and ‘City of Glasgow’… the first planes to pack the mail and the first to span the seas. You learn of the early German monsters and the facts about Henry Ford’s ‘Tin Goose.’

You find pictured the exteriors and interiors of aeroplanes that made one flight and of others still flying in these days of jets. You read about daring pilots and inventive genius.

Every fancier of flying machines will want this dramatic picture story of a fabulous era-for his own enjoyment, for reliving the days of his youth and for enlightening the youth of today.