Fly Now!: The Poster Collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum - Tapa blanda

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, they offer 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.

Dr. Joanne Gernstein London has been a curator at National Air and Space Museum (NASM) for 19 years, 16 of those as curator of the 1400-piece poster collection. As a historian at the NASM, she has contributed to such major exhibitions as "Legend, Memory, and the Great War in the Air" (about WWI) and "Where Next, Columbus?" (on the state of exploration on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing in 1492).