Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Sex in Aviation’s Glory Years

Aviation during its glory years represented opportunities, wealth, and glamour—and not just for the wealthy. While the media followed celebrities on passenger jets all over the world—Frank Sinatra (whose song “Come Fly with Me” was the theme song for Pan Am) and society writer Igor Cassini, for example—the middle classes also took to the skies, living their own versions of glamorous lives in Paris, Rome, and elsewhere abroad. The glory years of aviation, as Stadiem (Moneywood) explains, were intimately tied to marketing, positive thinking, and myth—as well as gossip fueled by the society pages. Touching on the lives of many celebrities and business tycoons, Stadiem covers the mid–19th-century to the early 21st, including the decline of “the Jet Set,” the youth of the 1960s lamenting their parents’ “conspicuous-consumption,” and the age of “airport anxiety.” Although at times jumbled, with too many timelines and stories competing with one another, the book is an interesting, entertaining read, full of colorful characters and the author’s thoughtful contemplation of the world of aviation. Illus. Agent: Dan Strone, Trident Media Group. (June)