Book Review: A Mighty Fine Road: A History of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company by H. Roger Grant

Abstract

larly easy read as it leans heavily on theory and frequently feels unnecessarily complex and verbose; as is the way of many mobilities texts, there were many obtusely worded sentences that make the field a tough one for new scholars and interested parties to enter. With more of a historical consideration it could have gone further to fill an evident gap for cultural histories of air travel alongside texts like Michael Paris’ From the Wright Brothers to “Top Gun”: Aviation and Popular Cinema, or A Bowdoin Van Riper’s Imagining Flight: Aviation and Popular Culture, both of which balance cultural and historical analysis effectively. Nonetheless, Durante has written a love letter to both aviation and fiction, merging the two together seamlessly and extrapolating some relatable and hard-hitting conceptions about what it means to be “cloud people” living within the imaginary of the Airworld.