Famous Airliners: Seventy Years of Aviation and Transport Progress

This is a wonderful book to give to a preteen interested in airliners. While it does discuss characteristics of the most influential airliners in history, the language is not such that you regret picking the book up or not majoring in aerospace engineering instead of sociology. It is great for pilots or designers, but works just fine for passengers, too. In a way, all the complaining we do about the quality of air travel today should be placed into the context of how things were a generation or two ago...we're actually quite well off.

This isn't for the casual reader, but anyone with an interest in this subject will enjoy it. Mr. Mellberg has written a fabulous book about a subject that he clearly loves. Maybe they could use color pictures in the next edition