Why am I passionate about this?
A long time ago, I was an early-aviation historian, but eventually realized that I knew only half the story—the part about airplanes. But what about airships? Initially, I assumed, like so many others, that they were a flash-in-the-pan, a ridiculous dead-end technology, but then I realized these wondrous giants had roamed and awed the world for nearly four decades. There was a bigger story here of an old rivalry between airplanes and airships, one that had since been forgotten, and Empires of the Sky was the result.
Alexander's book list on Zeppelin airships
Why did Alexander love this book?
This is an academic book, one that’s engaging, fluidly written, and immensely interesting for anyone intrigued by the longtime German fascination with airships. Rather than the technical details, Syon’s broader focus is on what the wondrous technology meant to Germans and how it shaped their culture and history over the decades. His approach, in other words, puts Zeppelins into context. Put it this way, in 1938 a large-scale survey discovered that Count von Zeppelin, the inventor of the airship and dead for twenty years, ranked among the best recognized of German luminaries. His score was higher than even that of the immortal Beethoven at a time when the Luftwaffe-obsessed Nazis were trying to scrub any memory of their airships. Such a finding is impossible to explain unless you understand the cultural importance of the Zeppelin, making this book critically important.
1 author picked Zeppelin! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
"Whenever the airship flew over a village, or whenever she flew over a lonely field on which some peasants were working, a tremendous shout of joy rose up in the air towards Count Zeppelin's miracle ship which, in the imagination of all who saw her, suggested some supernatural creature." As this paean to the Zeppelin from an early-20th-century issue of the German newspaper Thuringer Zeitung makes clear, the airship inspired a unique sense of awe. These phenomenal rigid, lighter-than-air craft-the invention of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin (1838-1917)-approached the size of a small village. Although they moved slowly, there was no…