Title Weekend pilots : technology, masculinity, and private aviation in postwar America / Alan Meyer

Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015

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Description 1 online resource Contents Machine generated contents note: 1. Who Is "Mr. General Aviation"? The Origins and Demographics of Postwar Private Flying -- 2. Shouting, Shirttails, and Spins: Flight Instruction and the Acculturation of New Pilots -- 3. The Family Car of the Air versus the Pilot's Airplane: Technology as Gatekeeper to the Sky -- 4. The "Right Stuff" Syndrome: Risk, Skill, and Identity within the Community of Pilots -- 5. Hog Wallow Airports, Hangar Flying, and Hundred-Dollar Hamburgers: Constructing Masculine Pilot Identity on the Ground -- 6. Gendered Communities: Negotiating a Place for Women in Private Aviation Summary "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 most right-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 Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject Private flying -- United States -- History -- 20th century Air pilots -- United States -- Psychology Air pilots -- Sex differences -- United States World War, 1939-1945 -- Influence. SPORTS & RECREATION -- Water Sports. Air pilots -- Psychology Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) Private flying United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781421418599 1421418592 1421418592

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