Fly Now!: The Poster Collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
by: Joanne Gernstein London

Softcover. Washington DC, National Geographic, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 192 pages. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum draws more visitors than any other museum in the world--90,000 a day in the summertime--and the exhibit of air travel posters featured in this unique companion volume combines arresting, colorful art, rare archival material, and a unique approach to aeronautical history. The posters--most of them never before published--feature barnstormers, gliders, and flying boats, the earliest passenger flights, the first luxury-liners, mail carriers, jets, and much more. Spanning a century and a half, they combine the popular art and the commerce of their eras, with both explored in the entertaining, informative text by a longstanding National Air and Space Museum curator. From 19th-century circus impresarios offering rides in gaudy hot-air balloons to the sleek 21st-century airliners, the posters provide a fascinating illustrated history of flight as it evolved from an exotic realm inhabited only by visionaries and daredevils into our modern world of speedy jets and frequent flyers--no longer extraordinary, perhaps, but still echoing with the exhilarating thrill and glamorous excitement captured here.