Historian Allen Herr’s lively aviation stories document fearless risk takers in Northern California with biographies of the pioneer aviators, descriptions of the barnstormers, commercial flyers, regional airplane builders, and local airfield development from 1910 to 1939. Extensive research and 94 photos, some published for the first time, complement two other titles in a book series of early Northern California aviation history written by the former pilot. Originally published in 2015 as Golden Wings over the Feather River (ISBN 978-1-935807-14-8), but with added information and more illustrations.This volume II of the series is about early aviation in Yuba, Sutter, and Butte Counties.

Aviation in Northern California 1910-1939: Vol. 1, San Francisco Bay Area is the only book to give a detailed account of early flying in the Bay Area. Historian Allen Herr recalls the aviation pioneers who flew weekly exhibitions promoting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition fifteen months prior to its San Francisco opening. These pioneers formed flying schools, built airports, manufactured aircraft, and competed against each other. Herr captures the energy behind the Bay Area aviation movement, tells who was involved, and describes the effects of their extraordinary determination and achievements. This edition is one of three in Herr's series of Aviation in Northern California 1910-1939.

Historical accounts of the first successful flight in California’s capital city and other notable Northern California flights that followed over three decades, the courageous aviators, and development of long forgotten airports from which they flew. Among them is the story of aviatrix Blanche Stuart Scott’s 1912 flights and Sac Muni female pilots twenty years later. Included is the first accurate history of early ag-flying in the north state revolutionizing the farmers. This is part of a three-book series on Northern California's aviation history 1909-1939.

Fortress California, now in paperback for the first time, links the growth of the U.S. military-industrial complex to civic leaders who competed for military bases and military contracts to ensure economic growth. Analyzing the growth of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco from 1910 to 1961, Roger W. Lotchin discredits the assumption that the industrialization of the Sunbelt was a result of a partnership between industry and the military. He provides instead a detailed and forceful argument that municipalities used federal resources to build urban empires and metropolitan-military complexes. These have increased the flow of federal dollars into the state, thereby shifting the focus of the military-industrial complex from warfare to welfare.

In this richly insightful survey that represents the culmination of decades of research, a leading western specialist argues that the unique history of the American West did not end in the year 1900, as is commonly assumed, but was shaped as much--if not more--by events and innovations in the twentieth century. Earl Pomeroy gathers copious information on economic, political, social, intellectual, and business issues, thoughtfully evaluates it, and draws a new and more nuanced portrait of the West than has ever been depicted before. Pomeroy mines extensive published and unpublished sources to show how the post-1900 West charted a path that was influenced by, but separate from, the rest of the country and the world. He deals not only with the West's transition from an agricultural to an urban region but also with the important contributions of minority racial and ethnic groups and women in that transformation. Pomeroy describes a modern West--increasingly urban, transnational, and multicultural--that has overcome much of the isolation that challenged it at an earlier time. His final book is nothing short of the definitive source on that West.

The Wright brothers have long received the lion’s share of credit for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in flying gliders twenty years before the Wright’s powered flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western Hemisphere. Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S. Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to take to the skies. They show that history’s nearly exclusive focus on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for Montgomery’s pioneering role in aeronautical innovation. As a scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained, demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery’s designs, and helped change society’s attitude toward what was considered “the impossible art” of aerial navigation. Inventors and aviators working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and Fogel place Montgomery’s story and his exploits in the broader context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation industry from the very beginning.