Anthony J Lawler, a successful airliner salesman, spent almost eight years of his "retirement" researching and bringing together the photographs of some
spectacular models from his and other collections, and writing the
accompanying detailed captions and explanatory text.
To hold this beautifully produced book in one's hands and leaf, slowly
through its pages is a wonderful and exceptional experience. Not only does
it recount the history of airliner models and their makers, from the 1920s
until recently, accompanied by over 800 photographs, most of them in color,
but the text also relates the accompanying development of the corresponding
"real life" airliners, large and small, over the same period. Add to that
the delightful accounts of how the author managed to acquire some unloved
models at quite an early age, together with his much
later adventures tracking down models of various rare or missing types, and
here's a very readable account of a fascinating subject, almost certainly
the best of its kind ever written. It's a part of air travel marketing history that is fast disappearing with online booking, and the vanishing of the many airline offices that used to display these wonderfully detailed models.