For anyone who loves to fly, this book is a must read. As a pilot in today's technology based world, reading this book was like stepping into a time machine back to the early days of commercial aviation. You're thinking that this can't be too exciting? Forget it, Gann leaves you white knuckled and wishing for more as he tells the true, (as he keeps reminding us, true as HE remembers them), stories of the adventurous, daring, and deadly dangerous days of the beginnings of the airlines, and their part in the clandestine lead up to WWII, and into the war. My favorite part is the first chapter which explains how the lives of the crews and passengers of those aerial schooners sometimes hung by a thread, (or at least 50 feet). I just wish he made this book a few hundred pages longer!