Skylark: Reviews

SKYLARK: THE LIFE, LIES AND INVENTIONS OF HARRY ATWOOD
UPNE, ISBN: 0874518911

book

“Mansfield provides an engaging account of early aviation history, and his book evokes the early part of the century when Americans embraced the promise of technology, when progress-even in the form of an airmobile-seemed possible and limitless.”
Publisher’s Weekly.

“Harry Atwood was a true pioneer of aviation; he was a student of the Wright brothers, set flying records for distance and speed, and even landed a plane on the White House Lawn. He was also a chronic liar, a con man, and an unreliable scoundrel who neglected his children·.A finely written chronicle of an attractive, if not admirable, man and of the age he helped create.”
Booklist.

“A large slice of America’s not-well-known past and of an eccentric genius who helped develop modern aircraft. A well-researched, honest evaluation of a man and his times.”
Kirkus.


“Mansfield’s style, backed by painstaking research, takes these memories from the black-and-white past and presents them in blazing full color.”
The Boston Globe.


This is a spellbinding book about a man who was many things to himself and others.
Air Power History


Pioneering aviator Harry Atwood makes a strange and at times maddening subject, but thanks to Howard Mansfields intriguing biography its hard to stop reading about him . . . [Atwood] was a daring pilot who pushed his primitive aircraft to early distance records, and he deserves recognition as a visionary who predicted the future of aviation and space exploration with uncanny clarity.
Air & Space Smithsonian


“Harry Atwood’s name is little known in New Hampshire and New England these days, although Howard Mansfield’s haunting biography of one of America’s pioneer aviators may help to change that . . . [Atwood] was a remarkable man and Mansfield’s ‘Skylark’ is a remarkable book.”
New Hampshire Sunday News


“Mansfield has put together an extraordinary biography, the first ever of Atwood.”  —Forward Reviews


“An extraordinary book about an extraordinary person·.Mansfield’s gift for recreating the feel and flavor of our American past is especially suited for the task of resurrecting Atwood-Mansfield’s insightful, meticulously researched portrait seems especially telling in the context of the innocent, distant times.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Harmless People.


“In Skylark, Howard Mansfield has achieved a true rarity in the field of aviation literature. In Harry Atwood, a pioneer aviator/inventor/promoter/“blue sky” salesman, he has found a representative of this country’s boundless enthusiasm for what is new, what is exciting, and what promises vast amounts of quick profit—mostly unmixed with much careful study of the project’s history. Harry’s career illustrates all of this, and the book serves as a marvelous guide to this period in our history.”
*
—Leonard E. Opdyke, Publisher, World War I Aero and Skyways.