Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World
By Alexander Rose

The Golden Age of Aviation is brought to life by the story of the giant Zeppelin airships that once roamed the sky and ended with the fiery destruction of theand Hindenburg.At the dawn of the twentieth century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany's Count von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world's first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the wondrousand airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades in the quest to control one of humanity's most inspiring achievements.And it was the airshipand --and not the airplaneand --and that would lead the way. In the glittery 1920s, the count's brilliant protege, Hugo Eckener, achieved undreamt-of feats of daring and skill, including the extraordinary Round-the-World Voyage of theand Graf Zeppelin.and At a time when America's airplanesand --and rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luckand --and could barely make it from New York to Washington, Eckener's airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury. What Charles Lindbergh almost died doingand --and crossing the Atlantic in 1927and --and Eckener effortlessly accomplished three years before theand Spirit of St. Louisand even took off.and Even as the Nazis sought to exploit Zeppelins for their own nefarious purposes, Eckener built his masterwork, the behemothand Hindenburgand --and a marvel of design and engineering. Determined to forge an airline empire under the new flagship, Eckener met his match in Juan Trippe, the ruthlessly ambitious king of Pan American Airways, who believed his fleet of next-generation planes would vanquish Eckener's coming airship armada.It was a fight only one manand --and and one technologyand --and could win. Countering each other's moves on the global chessboard, each seeking to wrest the advantage from his rival, the two men's struggle for mastery of the air was not only the clash of technologies, but of business, diplomacy, politics, personalities, and their vastly different dreams of the future.Empires of the Skyand is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.