| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials, 1914–1945. By Eric Schatzberg. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. xvi, 313 pp. $49.50, ISBN 0-691-08773-3.)

To most historians an important component of the aeronautical "revolution" of the 1930s was the transition from the wooden, or "mixed" wood-and-metal, airplane to all-metal construction, more specifically the monocoque fuselage and the low cantilever wing. Engineers at the time thought this was a "natural" progression, and historians since have tended to regard the adoption of metal as predetermined. Eric Schatzberg examines this topic, asking: What "logic" led engineers to believe in the inevitability of metal construction? and, conversely, why did they dismiss wood as a material somehow unworthy for the construction of the "modern" airplane? . . .

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