Books for the Aviator in Your Life

From 1937 to 1994, Lowry Air Force Base, located on the eastern edge of the city of Denver, served the nation and the surrounding community in many distinguished ways. The air base, primarily a technical training center, graduated more than 1.1 million enlisted members and officers in skills ranging from armament to photography, tremendously strengthening the country's war efforts in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. In addition, from the 1980s, Lowry Air Force Base remained one of Colorado's largest employers, with approximately 10,000 military and civilian men and women, providing an economic impact approaching $1 billion annually. Thus Lowry significantly contributed to maintaining the world's largest air force and to promoting the accelerated growth of the Denver metro area and Colorado.

On the cusp of the Great Depression, Denver mayor Benjamin Stapleton pushed for the development of the first city-operated airport. Denver Municipal Airport opened in 1929 with three hub airlines. While Stapleton would be honored to later have the airport named after him, by the mid-1980s, the name Stapleton had become synonymous with congestion, flight delays, and frequent closures when the snow moved in. To solve the problem, Denver mayor Federico Peña envisioned a massive new airport, but when Denver International Airport (DIA) opened in 1995, its three hub airlines had whittled away to just one, and critics warned of dire consequences. Yet the airport persevered, and today, with its iconic tent roof, six runways, and 53 square miles of land, it stands amongst the most beautiful and busiest airports in the world. This is the story of three airports and how they brought the city from cow town to boomtown.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, aerialist Ivy Baldwin had achieved celebrity status as a premier tightrope walker, aeronaut and aviation pioneer. He executed astonishing and perilous performances across America and internationally, including Mexico and the Far East. First by flying balloons, he went on to pilot dirigibles and, finally, aircraft. In his later years in Colorado, he became famous for crossing canyons on a tightrope. Historian Jack Stokes Ballard deftly captures Baldwin’s colorful and hazardous life from childhood runaway to aviation record holder.