Amy Reiter

Nowadays, when you’re standing on long, snaky lines, clutching your discount e-ticket and waiting to shuffle shoeless through airport security, it’s hard to remember that air travel was once a glamorous, exotic adventure enjoyed only by the well-dressed rich. While today we think of flying as something to be endured, when commercial air travel began less than a century ago, it was something to be enjoyed. In 1929, when Charles Lindbergh’s Transcontinental Air Transport offered the first air-rail passenger service across the country, you might have boarded a Ford Tri-Motor aircraft wearing your finest fur coat, been served an elaborate lunch on real china with gold-plated utensils, and watched sheep scatter across farmland through curtain-clad windows you could open for air …

In Brief: “Flying Across America” by Daniel L. Rust (The Barnes & Noble Review)