Book recommendations
05-10-2026 | 12:32 PM
#481
Line Holder
Joined: Sep 2025
Posts: 1,078
Likes: 895
His Majesty's Airship is a masterpiece. A triumph. While aviation professionals are sure to love it, it's so well written and briskly paced that general readers will enjoy it, too.
The book uses the story of R101, an enormous English zeppelin that crashed and burned in the fields of Northern France, as its entrée to a general history of lighter-than-air travel. By integrating the narrative of R101’s doomed flight with a general history of the zeppelin, writer S.C. Gwynne injects what could be a dry history with the horrific fascination of the slow-motion train wreck. In fact, Gwynne goes one better: he leads with an introduction to Christopher Birdwood Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, prime mover behind the R101 program, probable future viceroy of India, and doomed R101 passenger. In the first twenty pages of this remarkable history, Gwynne offers the reader morbid fascination, historical interest, and personal stakes. How could anyone not go all in on His Majesty’s Airship?
Once committed, readers are granted a tour of one of early aviation’s dead ends. We begin with Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin, who was introduced to lighter-than-air flight during his time as an official observer with the Union Army during the Peninsula Campaign. Following his Army career, Zeppelin committed all his resources to creating the airship that would bear his name. He was a laughingstock—until he succeeded and, at the age of 70, became the hottest entrepreneur in Europe. There was just one problem: the zeppelin was a bad idea. Underpowered, ungainly (particularly in rough weather), and extremely flammable, these large dirigibles were good for little more than short tourist hops on clear summer days. Nevertheless, the German government went all-in on zeppelins as strategic bombers during WWI: never mind that they very rarely succeeded in actually hitting anything. Still, the zeppelin caught the British imagination. What if these huge airships could be purposed for intercontinental travel, knitting together the Great Empire with stately, comfortable, swift air travel? What if Britain could create its own zeppelin industry out of whole cloth, compensating for its lack of institutional knowledge with British exceptionalism? What if the Secretary of State for Air could conceive of and direct the creation of such an intercontinental airship and use it for a round-trip journey to India, cementing his claim to the next viceroyalty of India and, not incidentally, impressing his girlfriend?
What comes next will be familiar to readers of The Challenger Launch Decision, The Limits of Expertise, or any history of the Titanic: rushed production; pressure from on high to get it done, regardless of official ‘safety first’ posturing; unheeded warnings from inside experts; “get-there-itis”; disaster. This drumbeat is all the sadder because it seems baked into human psychology. We do it, again and again throughout history. It makes one wonder whether human progress depends on those flukes, those times when the inevitable doesn’t happen and the new thing actually works.
S.C. Gwynne delivers all this tension, all this history, all this organizational psychology, all this human interest, in a brisk, conversational, occasionally amusing 249 pages (plus end notes). I love this book as much for its accessibility and brevity as for its educational value. I’ll be recommending this book to my fellow pilots for years to come. I’m recommending it to you now. His Majesty’s Airship absolutely soars.
The book uses the story of R101, an enormous English zeppelin that crashed and burned in the fields of Northern France, as its entrée to a general history of lighter-than-air travel. By integrating the narrative of R101’s doomed flight with a general history of the zeppelin, writer S.C. Gwynne injects what could be a dry history with the horrific fascination of the slow-motion train wreck. In fact, Gwynne goes one better: he leads with an introduction to Christopher Birdwood Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, prime mover behind the R101 program, probable future viceroy of India, and doomed R101 passenger. In the first twenty pages of this remarkable history, Gwynne offers the reader morbid fascination, historical interest, and personal stakes. How could anyone not go all in on His Majesty’s Airship?
Once committed, readers are granted a tour of one of early aviation’s dead ends. We begin with Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin, who was introduced to lighter-than-air flight during his time as an official observer with the Union Army during the Peninsula Campaign. Following his Army career, Zeppelin committed all his resources to creating the airship that would bear his name. He was a laughingstock—until he succeeded and, at the age of 70, became the hottest entrepreneur in Europe. There was just one problem: the zeppelin was a bad idea. Underpowered, ungainly (particularly in rough weather), and extremely flammable, these large dirigibles were good for little more than short tourist hops on clear summer days. Nevertheless, the German government went all-in on zeppelins as strategic bombers during WWI: never mind that they very rarely succeeded in actually hitting anything. Still, the zeppelin caught the British imagination. What if these huge airships could be purposed for intercontinental travel, knitting together the Great Empire with stately, comfortable, swift air travel? What if Britain could create its own zeppelin industry out of whole cloth, compensating for its lack of institutional knowledge with British exceptionalism? What if the Secretary of State for Air could conceive of and direct the creation of such an intercontinental airship and use it for a round-trip journey to India, cementing his claim to the next viceroyalty of India and, not incidentally, impressing his girlfriend?
What comes next will be familiar to readers of The Challenger Launch Decision, The Limits of Expertise, or any history of the Titanic: rushed production; pressure from on high to get it done, regardless of official ‘safety first’ posturing; unheeded warnings from inside experts; “get-there-itis”; disaster. This drumbeat is all the sadder because it seems baked into human psychology. We do it, again and again throughout history. It makes one wonder whether human progress depends on those flukes, those times when the inevitable doesn’t happen and the new thing actually works.
S.C. Gwynne delivers all this tension, all this history, all this organizational psychology, all this human interest, in a brisk, conversational, occasionally amusing 249 pages (plus end notes). I love this book as much for its accessibility and brevity as for its educational value. I’ll be recommending this book to my fellow pilots for years to come. I’m recommending it to you now. His Majesty’s Airship absolutely soars.
05-10-2026 | 02:18 PM
#482
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: Nov 2020
Posts: 2,957
Likes: 229
From: Enoch Powell Enthusiast
"Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History" - by S.C. Gwynne
(Same author from the aforementioned Airship book. Now that I know he wrote both, I'm going to have to read that one too.)
Haven't read any of his other works, but this book about the last hurrah of the Comanches is excellent.
The "Wild West" was almost indescribably violent. This book was an eye-opener.
(Same author from the aforementioned Airship book. Now that I know he wrote both, I'm going to have to read that one too.)
Haven't read any of his other works, but this book about the last hurrah of the Comanches is excellent.
The "Wild West" was almost indescribably violent. This book was an eye-opener.
05-10-2026 | 04:54 PM
#486
On Reserve
Joined: Apr 2016
Posts: 92
Likes: 7
From: 7ER A
"Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History" - by S.C. Gwynne
(Same author from the aforementioned Airship book. Now that I know he wrote both, I'm going to have to read that one too.)
Haven't read any of his other works, but this book about the last hurrah of the Comanches is excellent.
The "Wild West" was almost indescribably violent. This book was an eye-opener.
(Same author from the aforementioned Airship book. Now that I know he wrote both, I'm going to have to read that one too.)
Haven't read any of his other works, but this book about the last hurrah of the Comanches is excellent.
The "Wild West" was almost indescribably violent. This book was an eye-opener.
05-11-2026 | 07:56 AM
#487
Line Holder
Joined: Feb 2020
Posts: 995
Likes: 89
Speaking of the Wild West ... The Boy Captives by Clint L. Smith:
"in 1871, brothers Clint and Jeff Smith, ten and eight years old respectively, were captured by Lipans and Comanches while herding sheep near their family's home on Cibolo Creek between San Antonio and Boerne."
A5S
"in 1871, brothers Clint and Jeff Smith, ten and eight years old respectively, were captured by Lipans and Comanches while herding sheep near their family's home on Cibolo Creek between San Antonio and Boerne."
A5S
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