The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum draws more visitors than any other museum in the world—up to 90,000 a day—and the exhibit of air travel posters featured in this unique companion volume combines arresting, colorful art, rare archival material, and a unique approach to aeronautical history. The posters—most of them never before published—feature barnstormers, gliders, and flying boats, the earliest passenger flights, the first luxury-liners, mail carriers, jets, and much more. Spanning a century and a half, they combine the popular art and the commerce of their eras, with both explored in the entertaining, informative text by a longstanding National Air and Space Museum curator.
From 19th-century circus impresarios offering rides in gaudy hot-air balloons to the sleek 21st-century airliners, the posters provide a fascinating illustrated history of flight as it evolved from an exotic realm inhabited only by visionaries and daredevils into our modern world of speedy jets and frequent flyers—no longer extraordinary, perhaps, but still echoing with the exhilarating thrill and glamorous excitement captured here.
"…spectacular, engrossing, and at times almost overwhelming in its power. But its real achievement, and one that's much rarer for a large-format film—is the way it uses its gigantic images to educate, engage, and draw connections between natural disasters and human lives.''—The Boston Globe
''An intermittently spectacular science lesson, National Geographic's Forces of Nature delivers a trio of natural disasters—volcanoes, earthquakes and tornadoes—interwoven with well-meaning educational soundbites from a trio of scientists.''—Variety Magazine
