Review of Empires of the Sky by Alexander Rose

Empires of the Sky tells the story of the early days of powered flight and whether it would be airships or airplanes that would come to dominate air travel. For the most part it is a fairly detailed, lengthy history of airships, with a particular focus on Zeppelins and the men who would make and fly them. The Zeppelin story is one of triumph over adversity given their massive cost, many early disasters and Count Zeppelin’s political marginalisation. Even after the First World War, the company managed to keep going due to the political and corporate shenanigans of its new boss, Hugo Eckener, who pioneered international and transatlantic flights. With the rise of Nazism, however, Eckener’s vision became subverted for political ends and ended with the Hindenburg tragedy in 1937. Woven into the book is a much less well developed history of airplane development, with the thread evolving from a brief account of the Wright Brothers to focus on Pan American Airways and its cunning and ambitious boss, Juan Trippe. Like Eckener, Trippe was determined to create a network of international air travel and set about negotiating landing concessions and building airports across the Caribbean and Latin America, developing routes across the Pacific, and eventually the Atlantic. While airships initially had the advantage of better safety and passenger comfort, and longer fly times, they were expensive and required massive infrastructure. Despite Eckener’s dream, it would only be a matter of time as planes improved before the airship became obsolete for passenger travel. The story is a fascinating and engaging read, though it is somewhat misbalanced, especially in the context of its subtitle: “Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World”. It is basically a book about the rise and fall of passenger airships. Either the Pan Am material needed the same level of attention as the Zeppelin story, or it needed to be thinned out to keep the focus on the airship story. Nonetheless, an interesting account of early long-distance air passenger travel.