- 392 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
In his day Walter Wellman (1858–1934) was one of America’s most famous men. To his contemporaries, he seemed like a character from a Jules Verne novel. He led five expeditions in search of the North Pole, two by dogsled and three by dirigible airship, and in 1910 made the first attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air—which the self-styled expert on aerial warfare saw as a mission of world peace. He endured hardships, cheated death on more than one occasion, and surrounded himself with a team of assistants as eccentric and audacious as he was.
In addition to his daring adventures, Wellman became a nationally known political reporter and unofficial spokesman for the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations. He was not the first newspaper-sponsored adventurer, but more than any of his predecessors he turned exploration into a real-time media event, and his reputation both flourished and suffered because of it. Wellman lived during a time of rapid social and technological change, when explorers were racing to fill in the last remaining blank spots on the map and when aviation promised to fulfill humanity’s greatest hopes and darkest fears. Flight to the Top of the World is a window into Wellman’s time and illuminates many of its dreams and contradictions.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- Part 1
- 1. In Search of Christopher Columbus
- 2. Arctic Enthusiasm Is an Intermittent Fever
- 3. A Dog Show and the Seven Islands
- 4. Shipwrecked at the Hotel White Bear
- 5. The President Cannot Be Stampeded
- 6. Like Opening a Grave
- 7. Tell Them What It Was Like for Us Here
- 8. The Strenuous Life
- Part 2
- 9. The People Are Barely Able to Exist
- 10. With Johnny D’Mitch and the Coal Barons
- 11. This Crime against Organized Labor4
- Part 3
- 12. Motor Sledges and Airships
- 13. The Scheme Was Crazy Enough to Seem Workable
- 14. The Airship Station on Virgo Bay
- 15. Wellman vs. Peary
- 16. Balloons, Aeroplanes, and the Acrobatic Photographer
- 17. Go? Of Course. What Else Are We Here For?
- 18. Lost in a Snowstorm above the Polar Sea
- 19. Campaigns and Dollars
- 20. Under the Ice, Over the Ice
- 21. Nowhere Does His Story Ring True
- Part 4
- 22. Mr. Wellman’s Unbusinesslike Charm
- 23. The Funniest Damn Ship I Ever Joined
- 24. The Airship, Bringer of Total War and Universal Peace
- 25. The Aero-Not
- 26. It’s Europe or Bust from This Minute On
- 27. Only a Question of Time
- 28. The Queen of Spades
- 29. A Sort of Bleeding to Death
- 30. CQD
- 31. You’re All Right, Old Man!
- 32. New Dreams for the Aerial Age
- 33. The Most Perilous Element of All
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- About David L. Bristow