Journalist Lancaster debuts with an energetic and entertaining history of "the greatest airplane race ever flown," a 1919 round-trip race between San Francisco and Long Island. Conceived by U.S. Army Air Service deputy director William Mitchell and open only to "qualified military aviators," the race was designed to "demonstrate the transformative potential of aviation" and "protect the Air Service from the worst of postwar budget cuts." With rudimentary flight instruments, few permanent airfields, and "no radar, air traffic control system, or radio network," danger pervaded the competition from start to finish: four fliers were killed in the first two days, and one pilot required three planes to complete the race. Lancaster brings to vivid life the eccentric cast of racers, including Belvin Maynard, known as "the Flying Parson," a theology student who flew with his German police dog as a passenger, and Brailey Gish, who checked himself out of Walter Reed Medical Center to enter the transcontinental race while still in leg braces from his last crash. Though some participants get lost in the shuffle, there is no shortage of memorable characters and dramatic scenes. The result is a high-flying history of aviation's white-knuckle early days. (Nov.)

Lancaster's topic is the 1919 Transcontinental Air Race, a competition for former military aviators flying between San Francisco and New York. The author devotes several chapters to the race's organizer and advocate, Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell, whose tireless support of military aviation would eventually see him heralded as the father of the U.S. Air Force. Although the race took place during peacetime, Lancaster is in solid military-history territory as he recounts Mitchell's background and discusses aviation success during WWI and the plan to use the race to prove that airplanes would be essential to the military of the future. The race itself was fraught with peril, and the author recounts in great detail the inherent struggles of trying to fly cross-country when there were no navigational aids, and the weather could prove deadly. In the end, there were numerous crashes, injuries, and fatalities, and Lancaster covers all of it, making for thrilling reading. The book also includes outstanding photographs. An excellent read for those interested in aviation, the military, and American history.

In his first book, veteran journalist Lancaster soars along with dozens of pilots, mostly World War I veterans, who joined the U.S. transcontinental air race of October 1919 with the aim of being the first to complete a roundtrip flight between New York and San Francisco in a fragile, open-cockpit biplane. He flew the route himself, which should make the reading even more fun.

A dramatic account of the massive 1919 cross-country air race, "the likes of which the world had never seen." In his debut, journalist Lancaster, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent, focuses on Army Gen. Billy Mitchell (1879-1936), who rose to command all air combat units in France during World War I and returned after the armistice to fiercely advocate for an expansion of America's air power, a campaign that included organizing the great air race. At the time, airplanes were built with fragile wood and fabric, with open cockpits, unreliable engines with a range of 150-200 miles, no navigation aids more complex than a compass, and no parachutes. The U.S. airmail service was already a year old, despite a litany of disasters, and air races attracted large crowds and media attention. Only months before the big race, Mitchell had overseen a widely publicized competition in which 40 planes flew between New York and Toronto. With only a few weeks' notice, he announced a round-trip race across the continent, leaving from either Long Island or San Francisco. There followed a mass of publicity and torrent of applicants, mostly ex- or current airmen. In this well-researched text, Lancaster delivers an expert description of the planes (mostly ex--WWI fighters) and biographies of the volunteers, and he devotes more than half of the story to the precise details of the race. Primitive aircraft and unreliable weather forecasting, combined with the flyers' fierce competitiveness, proved a deadly combination. More than 50 planes crashed; some were repaired and flew on, but nine men died. The media praised the courage of the participants, and while writers claimed that it sped technical and commercial progress, Lancaster quotes some skeptics. He agrees that it marked the beginning of a new age and ends with a lively, occasionally gruesome history of early cross-country airmail and the not terribly pertinent but still intriguing story of Mitchell's eventual flameout. Entertaining fireworks during the early days of flight. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.