Boys' aviation series books from 1910-1950 shaped at least two generations' views of aircraft and American life. From the earliest days of aviation to those of spaceflight, they instilled a vision of flight both romantic and progressive. They described a future in which technology and humanity are complementary and offered flight as a way of bettering all mankind. In this first comprehensive study of the more than forty boys' aviation series, Erisman reveals the part played by the books and their writers in spurring the American nation's fascination with flying. It is a noteworthy piece of social and literary history that sheds new light on how popular art can transform technological progress into cultural idealism and reform. Some of the titles were written by journalists, others by military officers, and not a few by the pseudonymous ghosts of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, among others), yet all shared the same goal. Populated with manly heroes in the Tom Swift and (later) Charles A. Lindbergh tradition and drawing upon the almost daily advances in aviation technology, the books communicated a steadfast vision of the liberating, exhilarating world that flying offered every boy. More than that, they conveyed as well a glimpse of the better world that would come as air-mindedness and aviation worked their uplifting influence on the larger community.

The story of Sam Bass, both outlaw and romantic figure, has become a familiar part of Texas folldore and is well documented in nonfiction. But in this novel, Bryan Woolley creates a compelling story by giving the antihero fictional life. Woolley brings Bass alive through six alternating voices - Maude, the whore who was Bass's lover; Mary Matson; the African American who took him in and tended him as he lay dying; Dad Egan, the lawman who was once a father-figure to young Sam Bass but feels compelled to capture the outlaw, Frank Johnson, who rode with Bass but left the outlaw life to reappear as a small-town doctor; and Jim Murphy, the well-meaning saloonkeeper who makes a bargain with the law and brings down Sam Bass. In shaping the Bass story, Woolley explores the themes of youth and age, impulse and wisdom. An outlaw, for many of us, is not a villain or a criminal but someone who, by choice or circumstance, finds himself at odds with society. We see the outlaw life as one of carefree freedom without responsibilities and full of infinite possibilities. Frank Jackson says it best as he recalls riding with Sam Bass. ""I felt like an outlaw but not like a criminal, and the beauty of the day and its freedom filled me.

Amelia Earhart's prominence in American aviation during the 1930s obscures a crucial point: she was but one of a closely knit community of women pilots. Although the women were well known in the profession and widely publicized in the press at the time, they are largely overlooked today. Like Earhart, they wrote extensively about aviation and women's causes, producing an absorbing record of the life of women fliers during the emergence and peak of the Golden Age of Aviation (1925-1940). Earhart and her contemporaries, however, were only the most recent in a long line of women pilots whose activities reached back to the earliest days of aviation. These women, too, wrote about aviation, speaking out for new and progressive technology and its potential for the advancement of the status of women. With those of their more recent counterparts, their writings form a long, sustained text that documents the maturation of the airplane, aviation, and women's growing desire for equality in American society.In Their Own Words takes up the writings of eight women pilots as evidence of the ties between the growth of American aviation and the changing role of women. Harriet Quimby (1875-1912), Ruth Law (1887-1970), and the sisters Katherine and Marjorie Stinson (1893-1977; 1896-1975) came to prominence in the years between the Wright brothers and World War I. Earhart (1897-1937), Louise Thaden (1905-1979), and Ruth Nichols (1901-1960) were the voices of women in aviation during the Golden Age of Aviation. Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001), the only one of the eight who legitimately can be called an artist, bridges the time from her husband's 1927 flight through the World War II years and the coming of the Space Age. Each of them confronts issues relating to the developing technology and possibilities of aviation. Each speaks to the importance of assimilating aviation into daily life. Each details the part that women might-and should-play in advancing aviation. Each talks about how aviation may enhance women's participation in contemporary American society, making their works significant documents in the history of American culture.