Although airports are now best known for interminable waits at check-in counters, liquid restrictions for carry-on luggage, and humiliating shoe-removal rituals at security, they were once the backdrops for jet-setters who strutted, martinis in hand, through curvilinear terminals designed by Eero Saarinen. In the critically acclaimed Naked Airport, Alastair Gordon traces the cultural history of this defining institution from its origins in muddy fields to its frontline position in the struggle against international terrorism.From global politics to action movies to the daily commute, Gordon shows how the airport has changed our sense of time, distance, and style, and ultimately the way cities are built and business is done. He introduces the people who shaped and were shaped by this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindbergh, architects like Le Corbusier, and political figures like Fiorello LaGuardia and Adolf Hitler. "Naked Airport" is a profoundly original history of a long-neglected yet central component of modern life.
- ISBN10 0226304566
- ISBN13 9780226304564
- Publish Date 1 May 2008 (first published 4 October 2004)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 320
- Language English
- URL http://wiley.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9780226304564