The knowledge and experience of eleven years' continuous flying, in
war-time, across half the world, and as a test-pilot, combine to make Captain Norman Macmillan's The Art of Flying (Duckworth, 5s.) by far the best book on the subject we have read. Some of it is n little technical,perhaps, for the amateur: He who has not flown and expects to find practical hints as to what to do and what to avoid will have to delve about the book for his information `there is a need, indeed, for • a simple handbook of what is, in its elements, a simple subject—but the reader will be rewarded here with some remarkably good and unsophisticated writing. The sensations of a pilot at the " absolute ceiling " of his machine (" The blue Of the upper ,sky is very pale. The aeroplane hangs, seemingly motionless, in the centre of a pear-shaped spheroid ; the earth is very remote and dark-brown in colour ") are very vivid, as are his descriptions of a thunderstorm and of the strains of - extreme " stunting," -when gravity and centrifugal force send the blood coursing in surges through the body. The new world that is -opening out to us will make terrific physical as well as mental deinandi on the young. It is right that we should understand these things, even if we ourselves are past the age of aerobatics. No One who wants to keep abreast of the times should miss this book. The illustra- tions are excellent and it is chastening to see that only a dozen spectators witnessed the start of Bleriot's flight of the Channel on July 25th, 1909.
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