Book of Flight: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Aviation enthusiasts will also welcome The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Book of Flight by Judith Rinard. Packed with over 400 photographs and illustrations, this informative offering looks at humankind's earliest airborne efforts, including a sidebar about Leonardo da Vinci's famous sketches of ""ornithopters,"" or ""flapping-wing machines,"" and the Wright Brothers' 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk. Later sections focus on postwar barnstormers, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. ( Nov.)