Reviews for From Bouncing Bomb to Concorde: The Authorised Biography of Aviation Pioneer Sir George Edwards, OM

The average rating for From Bouncing Bomb to Concorde: The Authorised Biography of Aviation Pioneer Sir George Edwards, OM based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-14 00:00:00 Ernest Allen I don't really give a shit about Robert Fulton, to be honest. I just read this because I like Kirkpatrick Sale and know he's not the type to praise these famous historical "heroes." For anyone else who's not all that interested in Fulton, you'll probably be kind of bored with this one. Sale does get into some interesting subjects at times, criticizing the American Dream and warning about ambition and technological progress and shit, but for the most part this is just a biography with a slightly radical spin on it. If you are interested in Fulton and the history of the steamboat though, I would imagine that this is probably one of the better books on the subject.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-02 00:00:00 James Steck Robert Fulton was quite a character: bold, infinitely self-confident, lacking in personal integrity, and almost comically obsessed with ideas that never worked. He's the sort of shameless self-promoter that I would dismiss as a sleazeball or a quack if I met him in a professional environment. I'm glad this book exists, if only to reveal what sort of man Fulton really was. Several little things about this book annoyed me, such as the author's awkward system for incorporating contextual asides into the main story. Also, despite the promise in the title and the introduction, the book said quite a lot about Robert Fulton and nothing much about the American Dream.