BIBLIOGRAPHY

On airplanes and life:

Richard Bach
    Jonathan Livingston Seagull (fiction)
    Night Flight over Europe
    Nothing by Chance
    Stranger To the Ground

Scott Berg
    Lindbergh

Len Deighton
    Fighter
    Bomber (fiction).  This could be the best book written about WWII aviation. It has been listed among the ten best books in recent English fiction altogether, period.
    Goodbye Mickey Mouse (fiction)

James P. Gallagher
    Meatballs and Dead Birds.  This classic photo-history of the end of Japanese WW II airpower has been republished and is rich with material for modelers interested in that era.  Compare to Robert C. Mikesh's Broken Wings of the Samurai on the same subject.

Ernest Gann
    Fate is the Hunter
    The High and the Mighty (fiction)
    Blaze of Noon (fiction)
    Song of the Sirens.  This a book about ships and the sea, but it is one of Gann's best and compliments his aviation work.
    Ernest K. Gann’s Flying Circus

Hermann Hagedorn
    Sunward I’ve Climbed, The Story of John Magee, Poet and Soldier 1922-1941

Clive Hart
    The Dream of Flight, Aeronautics from Classical Times to the Renaissance
    The Prehistory of Flight

William Langewiesche
    Inside The Sky.  An interesting essay on the meaning of the aerial view to human consciousness.

Cecil Lewis
    Sagittarius Rising.  A must read, perhaps the best book about flying in WW I, and maybe simply the best book on flying, ever.
    Challenge to the Night
    Pathfinders (fiction)
    Never Look Back
    Gemini to Joberg
    Farewell to Wings

Ann Morrow Lindbergh
    North to the Orient
    Listen! The Wind.  This and the previous book tell the story of the two flights of the Lockheed Sirius first to China and then to Europe that she and her husband made in the early Thirties.
    Gift from the Sea.  Not about aviation, but probably the best work of this remarkable woman.

Charles A. Lindbergh
    We
    Of Flight and Time
    The Spirit of St. Louis
    The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh
    Autobiography of Values.  Lindbergh’s philosophical work connects flying to life and life to the advance of technology.

Beryl Markham
    West With the Night.  A must read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
    Straight On Till Morning:  The Biography of Beryl Markham, Mary S. Lovell

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
    Night Flight
    Wind, Sand and Stars
    Southern Mail
    Flight to Arras
    Airman’s Odyssey
    Wisdom of the Sands
    The Little Prince (fiction)
    Wartime Writings 1939-1944

Robert Wohl
    A Passion for Wings, Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918

V.M Yeats
    Winged Victory.  WW I flying fiction by a WW I pilot.  Compare to Cecil Lewis's non-fiction account of the same in Sagittarious Rising.

A web search of "Aviation Literature" produces a much larger bibliography of flight related subjects. This small bibliography focuses on work that is conscious of the human condition in regards machines and flight. Please recommend books or authors you think would support this general theme at Doxaerie.

On model building: 

The following is a small bibliography of works on model building that I have found useful both for constructing models and for the interesting perceptions of their authors.

John Alcorn, George Lee & Peter Cook
    Scratchbuilt: A Celebration of the Static Scale Airplane Modeler’s Craft (1993)

John Alcorn, ed.
    The Master Scratchbuilders (1999)

W.O. Doylend
    Aircraft In Miniature (1957)

William Winter
    The Model Aircraft Handbook (1943)

V.J.G. Woodason
    The Art of Scale Model Aircraft Building (1943).  This is arguably the best manual on how to construct solid wood models, and is also very interesting as an historical study in regards the training of model builders and the uses of model airplanes. With the techniques developed here and in the Woodman work, one might need only to add the skill of photo etching to have all the tools needed for building the finest models.

Harry Woodman
    Scale Model Aircraft in Plastic Card (1975).  Mr. Woodman dedicates this work to James H. Stevens who published a book titled Scale Model Aircraft in 1933, a manual on building solid scale models. In Woodman’s book, the skills of woodworking as well as paper card modeling techniques are illustrated as steps toward construction using plastic sheet material. Many details are carefully explained and illustrated which support scratchbuilding in any medium.

Frank A.A. Wootton
    How to Draw ‘Planes (1941)

State Education Department, The University of the State of New York.
    A Production Plan for the Scale Model Aircraft Project (1943). Here is illustrated how to set up all the jigs and procedures for producing thousands of your favorite solid model airplane….  While this booklet is not commercially available (probably never was), access to some copies may be available for photocopying.  Contact Doxaerie.

SKYWAYS The Journal of the Airplane 1920-1940, 15 Crescent Road, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 12601.  A quarterly journal with articles about airplanes of this era with detailed photography and drawings as well as features on models. Highly recommended.

And, finally, from the Aerial Annals of Middle Earth: