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Weekend Pilots: Technology, Masculinity, and Private Aviation in Postwar America. By Alan Meyer. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Pp. 328. $44.95.
Alan Meyer's clear and articulate prose in Weekend Pilots: Technology, Masculinity, and Private Aviation in Postwar America argues that "private pilots created and maintained a community and culture that demonstrated and celebrated ideals and behaviors traditionally associated with masculinity in America" (p. 7). Meyer characterizes the postwar American masculine ethos as physical and mental courage, aggression, autonomy, mastery, and technological skill. The central and most interesting idea presented is that technological enthusiasm-the masculine performance and skill over the machine-was more important to pilot identity than consuming the newest and safest technology.
Meyer draws inspiration from two main sources: Joseph J. Corn's seminal The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950 (1983), which chronicles Americans' depiction of pilots as "the personification of manliness" as they tamed and democratized the sky, and Technology and Culture's 1997 special issue on the interconnectedness of gender and technology (p. 9). Meyer's bottom-up approach to private aviation history is significant because it illuminates how flight acts as a vehicle for understanding culture and focuses on the importance...