Like Sex With Gods: An Unorthodox History of Flying (Centennial of Flight Series, 3)

Rating:
Summary: Everything you wanted to know about flying, but ....
Review: Singer is extremely witty and enthusiastic about her topic, and demystifies the human passion for flying, from the wacky to the rational. This is not a technical study, rather a good story, with fun illustrations. Leave that book on your coffee table: with a title like that, you know people will want to find out more...

Rating:
Summary: How to be Caught up into the Heavens
Review: This is an entertaining and insightful history of the dreams of flight before its achievement in the twentieth century. Bayla Singer makes the critical point that human flight is not a simple matter of science and technology, but rather a continuing epic of dreams and obsession, of yearning and striving to harness the intellect in the service of the emotions. She begins by noting that for millennia, people of all cultures have dreamed of flying. Their dreams have had overtones of religion, liberation, redemption, sexuality, and empowerment. She is overwhelmingly convincing in her assessment that flight is fraught with symbolism, more the stuff of legend and myth than technical virtuousity.

This book presents the realization of flight as part of a process embedded deep in modern civilization's psyche expressed through group synthesis and intended to satisfy societal values, rather than as a disconnected product of a single mind or in terms of progress along one "correct" path. Singer's narrative creates an amalgam of the psychological and technological aspects of human flight, showing their mutual relationship.

At a fundamental level the author demonstrates the powerful human emotions associated with flight. It has represented, at its most sublime, the desire to overcome the shackles that bind humanity to the Earth. This is a powerful objective, for throughout recorded history the ability to fly has been equated with deities, not with humanity. In learning to fly humanity may commune with deities--like with sex with gods--and somehow become gods ourselves. To engage in flight is to become like the gods, to transcend the Earthly plain and to reach for heaven. Think of that the next time a flight attendant is tossing you a bag or peanuts on an airliner.

This is a rich and powerful history, one that will engage all readers and illuminate new perspectives on the history of flying.