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Loading... The Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America (original 1992; edition 1992)by Stephen Coonts
Work InformationCannibal Queen by Stephen Coonts (1992)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Add the Cannibal Queen to my list of favorite travel tales: Blue Highways and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—this time in a fifty-year-old World War II Stearman bi-plane. It’s a leisurely romp across America as former Naval Aviator and novelist Stephen Coonts spends a summer landing in every state in the continental U.S. The book is not really a piloting primer, but there’s a fair share of reflection on weather, winds, and landing a tail dragger properly, with a little bit of news (the fall of the U.S.S.R.), opinions about book publishing before eBooks, and the colorful characters who own and operate General Aviation Airports. Coonts belonged to my flying club while I lived in Colorado during the Eighties. Sorry I never got a chance to meet him. ( ) Love all Coonts books that I have read, and this is no exception. Recommended, FROM AMAZON: In The Cannibal Queen, (Coonts) turns his storytelling genius to nonfiction with an exultant account of three glorious months in the summer of ‘91 spent in the cockpit of a 1942 Stearman vintage biplane. Joining the ranks of John Steinbeck and Charles Kuralt, Coonts takes us on an extraordinary adventure, touching down in all forty-eight of the continental United States. On a clear, sunny Saturday in June, Coonts and his fourteen-year-old son David take off from Boulder, Colorado, in a 1942 Stearman open cockpit biplane, “a noisy forty-nine-year-old wood and canvas crate with a naked floozy painted on the side.†The Queen started life as a World War II primary trainer then spent over thirty years as an agricultural spray plane before being lovingly restored. For Coonts, who’s logged thousands of hours in the Navy’s most sophisticated aircraft, the Queen is flying as he’s never known it before—flying close the earth, the wind teasing his helmet, equipped with little more than a map and a compass. First stop is a Stearman fly-in in St. Francis, Kansas. there amid the barbecues and barber-shop quartets, the tree lined streets with their modest homes, Coonts feels nostalgia for small-town America, for a way of life he felt was dying. Yet, by the end of the journey, having met the friendly, richly individual people in towns large and small across the land, he knows our nation has weathered her first two hundred years remarkably well, and he is filled with hope for the future of this vast and varied land. The author recounts his three-month, forty-eight-state flight into the heart of America in a 1942 Stearman bi-plane in the summer of 1991, describing the panorama of forests, mountains, rivers, and valleys beneath him. the culture of the private plane comes delightfully to life as Coonts marvels at a country where every little town has its strip, its laconic air controller, its cheap, clean motel just down the road. His observations on world politics seem pedestrian, but his insight into general aviation is clear and noteworthy: ``The general aviation industry is dying. Federal regulation and the legal system have driven it to the lip of the grave where it is waiting to expire and fall in.'' Middle-class, upbeat to a fault, and unmeditative. Yet the descriptions of flight and the portrait of an America seemingly trapped in a time-warp are arresting. This book relates the author's experience in flying an antique Stearman to all 48 continguous US states. I enjoyed the first part of the book best, when he was accompanied by his teenaged son. I liked the relationship between them. My husband, who is a pilot, enjoyed the flying sequences. The author also shares his views on politics and government, which seem out of place in a travelogue. I wanted to get back to stories about his family and the people he met. Hubby wanted to get back to the flying. no reviews | add a review
Travel.
Nonfiction.
HTML: The New York Timesâ??bestselling icon of the techno-aviation thriller takes to the skies in this memoir of a great American adventure in an open-cockpit biplane. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Stephen Coonts, including rare photos from the author's personal collection. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)917.304History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in North America United States TravelLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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