Review by Booklist Review
Let others savor Humphrey Bogart's steely gaze as he bids farewell to Ingrid Bergman at the end of Casablanca: as a cultural historian, Gordon has eyes only for the airport in which this famous farewell takes place. But the tarmac drama of Bogart and Bergman provides only one small tableau in this panoramic chronicle of the evolution of the airport--from the muddy pastures of the 1920s to the high-tech nerve centers of the twenty-first century. Architects receive their due in these pages--including the nearly invisible, glass-and-concrete naked airport design of Munich's Oberwiesenfeld--but Gordon also understands how often politics and economics have displaced the architect in shaping the modern airport. (Hitler successfully turned ugly ideology into the rigid monumentalism of Berlin's Tempelhof Airport.) And, in a sophisticated analysis that anticipates his 9/11 conclusion, Gordon recounts how the terrorist attacks and hijackings of the 1960s and 1970s turned airports into a fiercely contested battle zone. A cultural history linking the Wright Brothers of yesterday with the al-Qaeda cells of today will attract many appreciative readers. --Bryce Christensen Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
To today's air passenger-patiently removing his or her shoes for the third time that day, swallowing overpriced fast food or slumping on chairs of sadistically molded plastic-the world of travel depicted in Gordon's lively history will feel like a vanished Golden Age. In six chapters and an epilogue, Gordon, contributing editor for House and Garden and Dwell and author of Weekend Utopia, traces the evolution of the airport from the muddy fields of the 1910s to the "sterile concourses" of the '70s with an eclectic range of reference and an eye for detail. By the late '20s, high rollers could tour the capitals of Europe in two luxurious weeks, sunseekers could take flying boats from Miami to Havana in two hours and airports-from Buffalo to Berlin's Tempelhof-reflected widely varied strains of an optimistic and triumphant modernism. Much of this history is contained in the details of abandoned projects, and Gordon's unearthing of such grand schemes as "Toledo Tomorrow" add immeasurably to his narrative. Smoothly blending cultural and aesthetic history, Gordon's book is also helped by its 108 well chosen b&w illustrations and attractive design. Though the term "airport book" has other connotations, reading Gordon's book might just restore a little of air travel's vanished glamour... until the next checkpoint. Agent, Kim Witherspoon at Witherspoon Associates. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Gordon (Beach Houses: Andrew Geller) chronicles the airport through its various mutations, illustrating how it was slowly transformed into a unique human environment and also how it changed the rest of the modern world. Beginning with Bourget as the confirmation of Lindbergh's 1927 solo transatlantic flight, the narrative includes the Croydon Aerodrome (London) as the conceptual progenitor of passenger circulation, Tempelhof as the symbol of Hitler's boastful Third Reich, Idelwild (now New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport) as the forerunner of decentralized air terminals, and a host of other airports. Gordon is at his best in characterizing those individuals who left their stamp on America's great aerial embarkation points, but he also examines the airport's impact on society, which he lists randomly as uneven grades of architecture and design, contrasting levels of rapid passenger mobility and screening bottlenecks, urban sprawl, gaudy decor and confusing signage, off-the-scale neighborhood noise and pollution levels, infuriating security measures, and air rage. Concluding with the airport's postmodern campaign against international terrorism, Gordon successfully maintains the delicate balance between his subject and the broader context of American aviation history. Recommended for architectural and aviation collections and all libraries. John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The prolific shelter magazine writer chronicles the shifting architectural conceptions of an airport, from classical shrines to the dreams of Lindbergh and the Wrights to passenger-processing "tunnels to nowhere." Gordon's comprehensive survey necessarily includes much on the development of commercial aviation from its raw beginnings, making it clear that in the long run the municipalities and politicians juggling public funds have consistently underestimated the dynamic growth of the industry as well as the impact of aviation technologies on ground-based support facilities. Yet architects of the stature of Le Corbusier rose immediately to the challenges. As early airliners fell out of the sky with alarming regularity, airports initially took shape as soothing parlors that would transform the queasiness of nervous passengers into anticipation of a wonderful, mythic experience. In the era of transoceanic travel, airports like Berlin's Tempelhof or France's Le Bourget became a city's, or even a nation's, cultural statement to the world. Yet some planners saw them only mirrors of train stations. Gordon includes, and occasionally dwells overmuch on, a number of designs for airports that never came to fruition, more often from lack of public support than innate outlandishness (though the idea of runways extending and connecting across the tops of a city's skyscrapers does seem fanciful). Even successful early airports were crushed into core artifacts or destroyed outright by the demands of the jet age, but top-line architects like Pei and Van der Rohe responded with pleasingly functional concepts that anticipated the mass acceptance of worldwide travel. Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal at New York's Kennedy airport, called the "bird terminal" by admirers and detractors alike, was a soaring example. Slow development and inflexible plans were punished in the 1970s, when Atlanta's airport manager advised the mayor that his new airport was obsolete on the day it opened to the public. A hefty buff book. (108 b&w illustrations) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
