Review by Choice Review
Palmer's interesting, well-illustrated book is a cultural history of aviation in Russia from late czarist days through the horrors of Stalin and WW II. It is well documented, and Palmer, not himself a historian of aviation, has mastered much of the literature on Russian aviation and provided a bibliography of value even to specialists. Russia's backwardness compared to Western Europe and the US in the years covered by the book is made clear. In spite of that, the author notes that there were Russians of great ability who did great work, e.g., Igor Sikorsky who designed and built the world's first four-engine transport aircraft just before WW I. One of those, the Il'ya Muromets, could carry more than a dozen people in luxury that today's passengers would envy. That airplane made a round trip from St. Petersburg to Kiev without incident in mid-1914. By the end of WW II, Russia was producing many world-class warplanes that helped in achieving the Allied victory, although earlier in that war, the Soviet Union was helped immensely by thousands of US planes provided by the Lend-Lease program. For historians of aviation and military matters, and general readers interested in some of its topics. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels. M. Levinson formerly, University of Washington
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
