Weekend Pilots
Technology, Masculinity, and Private Aviation in Postwar America
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"After August 1945, millions of U.S. servicemen formed a tidal wave of people returning to civilian life--locating or returning to work, heading to school under the GI Bill, marrying and starting families. With much profit, historians in various fields have examined this effort to recover normalcy. Meyer points out that a great many of the vets, not all of them trained military airmen, also took up the hobby of flying, and he here explores what became a postwar phenomenon, the spectacular growth of American private aviation (i.e., neither military nor commercial) and the rise of the "weekend p...
"After August 1945, millions of U.S. servicemen formed a tidal wave of people returning to civilian life--locating or returning to work, heading to school under the GI Bill, marrying and starting families. With much profit, historians in various fields have examined this effort to recover normalcy. Meyer points out that a great many of the vets, not all of them trained military airmen, also took up the hobby of flying, and he here explores what became a postwar phenomenon, the spectacular growth of American private aviation (i.e., neither military nor commercial) and the rise of the "weekend pilot." He takes readers inside a culture that turns out to be something of a throwback: It required exceptionally high skill levels; involved considerable risk; encouraged, demanded, fierce personal independence; indulged a post-military fatalism, even among the younger sort who later joined the movement; and above all granted one membership in a self-consciously white, male circle of the initiated. How does one explain the development of this peculiar culture? Meyer searches for answers in public records, trade association prints, newspaper accounts, and private papers and interviews. He has put together an impressive first book. Norman Mailer once argued that mostright-leaning politics since the 1970s draws upon the anxieties and grievances of displaced white American males. He may have spoken best for himself, but this book will give credence to the observation"--Provided by publisher.
