When Giants Ruled the Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship

John J. Geoghegan

Jun 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Tom Perkins

About this audiobook

Nearly everything people know about airships is wrong. Few realize that prior to the Hindenburg disaster airships transported passengers without a single casualty for more than twenty years, a record unmatched by any other form of transportation. When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world's largest, most expensive, and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her. In doing so it reveals how the American airship came within a hair's breadth of replacing planes, trains, and ocean liners as the dominant form of long-distance transportation, and exactly what went wrong, a tale of physical courage, engineering acumen, ugly politicking and two egregious disasters.

About the author

John J. Geoghegan began his career as a special correspondent for the New York Times. His first book, Operation Storm, tells the story of a squadron of Japanese underwater aircraft carriers built to launch an aerial raid against the US as a follow up to Pearl Harbor. It served as inspiration for a Channel Five documentary.

An award-winning audio engineer for over forty years, Tom Perkins has expanded his skills to narrating and has more than sixty titles to his credit. He learned by working with the world's best voice talent during his career, and he continues to engineer a variety of projects.