The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
ISBN10: 0374516359
ISBN13: 9780374516352
Trade Paperback
192 Pages
$18.00
CA$24.00
This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship—huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. It carries bridges, buildings, fleets of trucks. It is a flying warehouse. It eliminates the need for roads, railroads, prepared harbors—or so goes the dream. With an arching back and a deep belly, it looks like a tremendous pumpkin seed. Its early and secret experimental developmental took twelve years' time and 1.5 million dollars. All of this capital came from private individuals. Much of it was raised by the minister of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Trenton, New Jersey, who initiated the project.
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed is well-crafted and well-reported, surprising and engrossing—exactly the sort of nonfiction John McPhee is known and loved for.
Reviews
Praise for The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
"It's a book Leonardo da Vinci would have warmed to, a set of experiments he'd have changed."—Paul West, The Washington Post
"What gives [McPhee's] writing its powerful fascination is the strange, raw quality of fact: it all really happened, just the way he says . . . McPhee watches so intently that the Aereon and its people become real and important to the reader."—John Skow, Los Angeles Times
"McPhee has a genius for writing about unusual people whose activities border on the eccentric, and the Aereon project abounded with them. His engrossing account can be read at a sitting."—Donald R. Morris, The Houston Post
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, The
IN GREAT SECRECY, on a private airstrip about fifty miles southwest of New York, Aereon 7 got ready to fly. Conditions were good. It was a clear August evening in 1970, humid, but not remarkably so...
About the author
John McPhee
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