"Polish Aircraft—1893-1939"

By Jerzy B. Cynk. 760 pp. 8 3/4 in. x 5 1/2 in. (Putnam & Co. Ltd., 9, Bow Street, London, WC2. £7.50.)

Anyone who owns every aeronautical book published by Putnam’s can count on an incredibly complete library on the subject. The ability of this publishing house to find authors who have an intimate knowledge of aeroplanes of all ages, types and sizes, and sources of photographic and drawing-board illustrations of them, is one of the wonders of consistent publishing.

The admiration expressed in the preceding paragraph is enhanced by the latest, and one of the biggest, of these books which covers the history of flying in Poland and of Polish aeroplanes. I am not particularly interested in Polish aeroplanes myself and I am not quite sure who is. But it is comforting to know that if ever I need to know, for instance, the maximum permissible diving speed of a Bartel BM6a or to discover what the experimental Walter Major-powered RWD20 with nosewheel landing gear looked like, it is between the widely-separated covers of this remarkable and beautifully produced book by Cynk, together with other facts and figures and pictures innumerable. I am not surprised that it took 25 years to research. Interesting that Skoda aero-engines figure in it.

As an aside, will someone tell me roughly how many flying machines have been built since the World began!—W. B.