America's Amazing Airports captures the magic and history of our airports. Archival and contemporary photographs reveal airports outside and inside. An easy read for all ages.

"In this history of the places that travelers in cities across America call "the" airport, Janet R. Daly Bednarek traces the evolving relationship between cities and their airports during the crucial formative years of 1917-47."--BOOK JACKET.

-Chronicles the transformation of the patch of farmland leased by Albert Bond Lambert in 1920 into the sprawling international airport it is today. Illustrated extensively with images from the airport's history, the book tells not only the story of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, but also the history of what it means to take flight in America--

John F. Kennedy International Airport is one of New York City's most successful and influential redevelopment projects. Built and defined by outsize personalities—Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, famed urban planner Robert Moses, and Port Authority Executive Director Austin Tobin among them—JFK was fantastically expensive and unprecedented in its scale. By the late 1940s, once-polluted marshlands had become home to one of the world's busiest and most advanced airfields. Almost from the start, however, environmental activists in surrounding neighborhoods and suburbs clashed with the Port Authority. These fierce battles in the long term restricted growth and, compounded by lackluster management and planning, diminished JFK's status and reputation. Yet the airport remained a key contributor to metropolitan vitality: New Yorkers bound for adventure and business still boarded planes headed to distant corners of the globe, billions of tourists and immigrants came and went, and mammoth air cargo facilities bolstered the region's commerce. In The Metropolitan Airport, Nicholas Dagen Bloom chronicles the untold story of JFK International's complicated and turbulent relationship with the New York City metropolitan region. In spite of its reputation for snarled traffic, epic delays, endless construction, and abrasive employees, the airport was a key player in shifting patterns of labor, transportation, and residence; the airport both encouraged and benefited from the dispersion of population and economic activity to the outer boroughs and suburbs. As Bloom shows, airports like JFK are vibrant parts of their cities and powerfully influence urban development. The Metropolitan Airport is an indispensable book for those who wish to understand the revolutionary impact of airports on the modern American city.

Three quarters of a million people are in a plane somewhere right now. Many millions travel by air each day. For most of us, the experience of being in an airport is to be endured rather than appreciated, with little thought for the quality of the architecture. No matter how hard even the world's best architects have tried, it is difficult to make a beautiful airport. And yet such places do exist. Cathedrals of the jet age that offer something of the transcendence of flight even in an era of mass travel and budget fares. Here are twenty-one of the most beautiful airports in the world. The book features: Wellington International Airport, 'The Rock' shaped like the dangerous cliffs of a local legend Kansai International Airport, Renzo Piano's gigantic project built on three mountains of landfill Shenzhen International Airport, a manta ray shaped terminal putting this booming region on the map Daocheng Yading Airport, the world's highest civilian airport in the middle of the Tibetan mountains Chhatrapati Shijavi International Airport, rising from the slums of Mumbai like a Mogul palace Queen Tamar Airport, a playfully iconic modern airport nestled in the mountains of Georgia King Abdulaziz International Airport, the gateway to Mecca resembling a Bedouin city of tents Pulkovo Airport, mirroring the city of St Petersburg with bridges, squares and art Berlin-Tegel Airport, ultramodernity, 1970s style Copenhagen Airport, an icon from the golden age of air travel Franz Josef Strauß Airport, sober and easy to negotiate, Munich's model airport Paris Charles du Gaulle Airport, the brutalist icon that launched the career of airport architect Paul Andreu London Stansted Airport, Norman Foster's return to the golden age of air travel Lleida-Alguaire Airport, a relic of Catalonia's early 21st century building boom Madrid-Barajas Airport, Richard Rogers and Antonio Lamela's calm, bamboo-panelled Terminal 4 Marrakesh Ménara Airport, a blend of 21st century construction and traditional Morrocan design Santos Dumont Airport, Rio de Janeiro's modernist masterpiece Carrasco International Airport, Rafael Viñoly's design inspired by the sand dunes of his native Uruguay Malvinas Argentinas International Airport, echoing the mountains and glaciers of Tierra del Fuego John F Kennedy International Airport, Eero Saarinen's glamorous jet-age TWA terminal Spaceport America, a vision of the future in the New Mexico desert

Imagine a world without airports! Air travel has changed the way we live and work, but no one would be able to travel without airports. Over the past 100 years, air travel has gone from an unusual adventure to an everyday event. Discover the stories behind eight major U.S. airports, including how they were built, how many people they serve, and the problems and solutions that have changed air travel over the decades. Airports are a vital part of America's infrastructure, and their construction and expansion tell an important story about how Americans live and work today.