Acquisitions

Peter J. Bowler. A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. An excellent survey of the way that the future was imagined in the public sphere, mostly in Britain and mostly in the first half of the 20th century. The title […]

Jon Cooksey. The Vest Pocket Kodak & The First World War. Lewes: Ammonite Press, 2017. A small book on an interesting topic. The utility and portability of the Vest Pocket Kodak camera made it incredibly popular with soldiers in the front lines and behind them, mostly British here (though the French and Germans are not

Paul Gooding. Historic Newspapers in the Digital Age: ‘Search All About It!’ London and New York: Routledge, 2017. I was hoping for more of a practical guide to the many methodological issues involving the use of digitised newspapers than this provides; it’s much more about the theoretical issues surrounding digitisation and how that connects (or

C. D. Coulthard-Clark. The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39. North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991. The classic history of the early RAAF (not that there is much serious competition). People, policies, institutions, infrastructure — it’s all here, even air displays! Richard P. Hallion. Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air

A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Imagining Flight: Aviation and Popular Culture. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. In some ways this feels like similar territory to Joseph Corn’s The Winged Gospel, but as the title suggests it has more of a popular culture focus (especially film). It also has much more of a worldwide and

David T. Courtwright. Sky as Frontier: Adventure, Aviation, and Empire. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Looking at the history of aviation as the expansion into a frontier is an interesting approach, especially in terms of the American experience, as examined here. But it’s also a useful entry point to the key transition from

Apparently aviation has historically had some slight connection with the United States… Dominick A. Pisano (ed.) The Airplane in American Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. I’ve actually used this collection before, for Jill D. Snider’s excellent chapter on the aerial bombardment of Tulsa in 1921, but there is much else here of

Prudence Black. Smile, Particularly in Bad Weather: The Era of the Australian Airline Hostess. Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2017. I’ve been fortunate to hear some presentations relating to Pru’s ARC project on the history of Australian air hostesses, and it’s fascinating stuff. Drawing partly on oral history interviews, she charts the changing roles and gender expectations

Owen Hatherley. The Ministry of Nostalgia. London and New York: Verso, 2017. Hatherley’s misapprehension about the origins of Keep Calm and Carry On got me an article in The Conversation, so I figure I owe him a book sale. But I also suspect that he’s on to something with his (much) larger argument about the