Larry Weirather

To learn more about this book that took over three decades of writing and collecting, see the updates at clipperculture.com.

The China Clipper, Pan American Airways and Popular Culture

What reviewers say:

"This detailed examination of Pan Am's Clippers goes far beyond a recitation of the company's history.  There is much to surprise readers."  --Aviation History

"A must have book for the Clipper buff."

"A successful blend of historical fact....all lightly seasoned with humor." 

The China Clipper, Pan American Airways and Popular Culture  shows how Pan American Airways Clipper flying boats so captured public imagination  during the 1930s and 1940s that these flying icons permeated all of popular culture.  The book has received rave reviews and is currently available through Amazon.com,  mcfarlandpub.com, and through  booksellers.  With over 300 pages and nearly 100 illustrations, many in color, the book traces how Clippers symbolized most deeply held, and often contradictory, changing beliefs and needs of the United States in everything from children’s toys to music to motion pictures to Motor City.  To understand the Clippers is to understand Depression and post-Depression sensibility.  Clippers helped prepare the populace to fight a war, and would lead the country out of war.  That same war, World War II, caused the demise of what many people have termed “the most romantic ships ever built,” whose routes took them to the most romantic places in the world.  Clippers continue to fly on in contemporary popular culture.

The book particularly emphasizes the role Clippers played in the education of children, from valentines (see book cover above) to textbooks to the games they played.

ISBN-10:  0786428201, ISBN-13:  978-0786428205                   Published by McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers in 2006 351 pages, paperback.