| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Dreams of Flight: General Aviation in the United States. By Janet R. Daly Bednarek with Michael H. Bednarek. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. xviii, 191 pp. $32.95, ISBN 1-58544-257-7.)
Any book that begins by defining what its subject is not has a problem. Part of the Centennial of Flight series (edited by Roger Launius), this brief history of "general aviation" (every aspect of flying except military and commercial airlines) attempts to describe these diverse aerial undertakings (everything from acrobatic sport flying to corporate jets) during the first century of flight. Hence the problem—what to leave out?	1
Conceiving of a nonscholarly synthesis for the general reader, the solution of Janet R. Daly Bednarek and Michael H. Bednarek is to limit their history to heavier-than-air flight, which leaves out blimps and such but still requires them to cover a vast and unwieldy mass of helicopters, flight training schools, and airplane manufacturers. It is an impossible task when done other than superficially, and that is the major and unavoidable fault of this book.	. . .

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