The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the practical development of the airship, the lighter-than-air flying machine, which offered the first real means of aerial navigation, and thus realised the age old dream of mastery of the air. Throughout Europe and America, aviation pioneers began to construct machines that would provide a safe and reliable means of aerial transport. Aerial navigation, it was believed, would 'shrink' the world, improve communications between nations, and bring about a bright new age in human affairs. In both Europe and America, 'air-mindedness' became a symbol of the triumph of humankind over the physical environment. This was particularly so in Germany where Count von Zeppelin developed a number of reliable and powerful airships which by the end of the first decade of the new century were operating a regular passenger service between German cities. But parallel to these visions of a future technological utopia, was a darker strand of thought: how would the flying machine affect future warfare, was this the ultimate weapon that would bring about the destruction of civilization and the end of humankind? Such thinking culminated in 1908 in H.G.Wells' bleak novel, The War in the Air," in which the struggle for supremacy between the world's aerial navies brings about a new dark age. The German Zeppelin particularly aroused great anxiety and in Britain resulted in the so-called 'Zeppelin Panic' and which reinforced the growing Anglo-German antagonism. The first stumbling steps towards creating an aerial weapon during the Great War, seemed to confirm the dark foreboding of Wells and his followers. Yet despite the events of the war, the post-war world saw the rebirth of optimism and by the 1920s the aeroplane and airship, were still largely seen as agents of human progress and improvement, powerful symbols of modernity and a positive indicator of a nation's scientific and technological excellence. Given the technical limitations of the aeroplane, many argued that the future belonged to the airship, and in Britain, Germany, America and Italy, considerable attention was lavished on developing trans-global machines that would carry passengers and freight, explore the undeveloped regions, and fly the flag for national achievement: the American Navy airships and polar exploration, the German trans-Atlantic passenger routes, and the British attempts to develop giant airships for the imperial air routes. Michael Paris's book offers a popular history of the airship era from the literary visions of the later nineteenth century, through the practical stage of development in the twentieth century when the airship became a reality and was used for a variety of purposes, to the 1930s when, in a series of spectacular disasters, the airship dream was finally shattered.