A veteran pilot's affectionate, anecdotal take on the slow death of Pan American World Airways, which, in the unsentimental language of the trade, went ``Tango Uniform'' (``tits up'') at the end of 1991. Before recounting the global carrier's lengthy descent into oblivion, Gandt (who made a host of friends and contacts during the 26 years he flew for the airline) recalls its glory years, when legendary Juan Trippe ruled the roost. An often infuriating innovator, Trippe (known in-house as the Great Dissembler) helped found Pan Am in 1927. With wise counsel from Charles Lindbergh, he pushed his company from the flying boats and stratocruisers that bracketed the WW II era into the jet age, in the process convincing Boeing that it made economic as well as operational sense to build the 747 jumbo jet. Under his visionary, if occasionally vague, stewardship, Pan Am prospered. But, according to Gandt, the company became convinced that it was as much an institution as a commercial enterprise. The author dates the painfully slow eclipse of Pan Am's Skygod status from the mid-1960s, when the company bought more jets than it could fly at a profit. Trippe stepped down about this time as well, and his successors weren't up to the job of running an international carrier. During the competitive period that followed deregulation of the US air-transport industry, in fact, several made fatal mistakes: ill-advised acquisitions (in an attempt to gain domestic routes); market miscalculations; adversarial labor relations; and divestiture of crown-jewel assets (including Pacific routes) at fire-sale prices. The terrorist bomb that blasted flight 103 from the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland, along with the Gulf War, caused even more passengers than usual to shun Pan Am and finally put paid to its very existence. With a full ration of fine yarns from the cockpit and flight line, a genial requiem for a once consequential heavyweight.
Pub Date: March 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-04615-0
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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