4,306 words
Porco Rosso is one of the more famous Studio Ghibli films, released in 1992. It is the midpoint of an unofficial Miyazaki trilogy examining flight as a method of personal and national liberation, beginning with 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, and concluding with 2013’s The Wind Rises. Porco Rosso is the strongest of the three, being bright, bold, and easy to follow whilst touching on more serious themes than its premise might suggest. (more…)
1,663 words
Fernando Esposito
Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
The British political theorist Roger Griffin has argued that the defining characteristic of fascist movements is a central myth of national rebirth, or palingenetic ultranationalism. His study of fascism (The Nature of Fascism) sparked controversy upon its publication because it diverged from the consensus at the time that fascist movements were purely reactionary and conservative in character; (more…)
6,022 words
Joe Kittinger and Craig Ryan
Come Up and Get Me: An Autobiography of Colonel Joe Kittinger
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010
“Fighter pilots and test pilots do not accept death. We accept the risks.” — Col. Joe Kittinger
Col. Joe Kittinger had been ballooning upward for two hours. (more…)
2,403 words
Aviation and astronautics were once my prime interests. As a student pilot, at the age of 20, when aviation was much more dangerous than it is today, I concluded that if I could fly for ten years before being killed in a crash, I would be willing to trade an ordinary lifetime for that experience. In the ’30s, I assisted Robert Goddard, the father of spatial conquests. (more…)
1,516 words
German translation here
Charles Lindbergh, 1902–1974
Editor’s Note:
From the vantage point of the present, it seems almost impossible that the following article could appear in a popular magazine like Reader’s Digest. Yet it did appear in November 1939–within the lifetime of many of those living today. (more…)