Flying Cars: The True Story by Andrew Glass (review)

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Reviewed by: Flying Cars: The True Story by Andrew Glass Elizabeth Bush Glass, Andrew Flying Cars: The True Story. Clarion, 2015 [128p] illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-618-98482-4 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-8 Boats float, planes fly, and cars roll along the ground. Everybody knows that. But then there are planes that take off and land on water, and amphibious boats that pull up onto dry land. So what about cars that take to the air? As Glass demonstrates here, it’s not an outlandish idea at all—just a somewhat arcane one whose brief period of promise flourished and then pretty much faded by the mid twentieth century. Short chapters in chronological order feature the many notable attempts at inventing a vehicle that is flight- and road-worthy, that can convert quickly from one mode to the other, that offers the comfort and operational ease of an automobile, and that is sufficiently stable in flight to be safe for the most amateur of pilots. Perhaps most surprising to readers will be the degree of success enjoyed by the inventors; many flying cars have been demonstrated as safe and efficient, only to suffer some one-off accident that, however minor, put the public off its appetite for a winged vehicle of their own. The text focuses on innovation at each new level, and if the writing style is somewhat dry, the photographs more than compensate. With attention to engineering, design, and consumer demand, this is a topic well suited to STEAM curricula that should be welcomed by science teachers, young inventors, and anyone who browses the amazing pictures and wonders, “Why not?” Source notes, bibliography, index, and a list of websites for archival video are included. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois