The book American Aviation: An Illustrated History is a comprehensive look at the development of both civil and military aviation from the first hot air balloons up to manned space flight.  This book, at its heart, is a fascinating story of the people, machines and accomplishments that is both entertaining and informative.  This informative but very readable text covers the great aviation moments including its accomlishments, discouragements and amusing incidents that have accompanied the development of aviation since the earliest hot air balloon experiments in France during the late Eightenth Century.  This book includes the following sections: 1) Those Magnificent Men And Women!; 2) The First Air War; 3) The Wings Grow Stronger; 4) Naval Air And Billy Mitchell; 5) Birth Of Air Mail; 6) The Barnstorming Era; 7) The First Airlines; 8) Czar Of The Airways; 9) Glass Houses; 10) The New Deal And U.S. Airpower; 11) WWII: The Desperate Months; 12) The War In Europe; 13) Victory And The Unreal War; 14) Uneasy Peace; 15) Johnson's War; 16) Gen-Av And Fun-Av; 17) Economic IFR; 18) America Into Space; 19) Appendix A: Objective Questions; 20) Appendix B: Answers To Objective Questions and 21) Index.  This book includes many vintage black and white photographs and a number of illustrations.  Another interesting feature of this book is that each chapter begins with the objectives the reader should achieve through the studying of the text and has review questions at the end to test the reader's knowledge of the studied materail.  Note: this book was purchased from a private collection in 2008.  This book is 394 pages and is in very good condition.  The author is Joe Christy with contributions by Alexander T. Wells, ED.D..  Edition published in 1987.