This is not a simple time-line of the second international air race meeting with some nice photos, but a more academic work in which nine different authors write about different aspects of Italian aviation history in ten chapters:
- The meeting as a media event
- Chronicle of an event
- The meeting and the first push of aviation in Italy
- Pilots and designers at the meeting
- The 1909 meeting in the contemporary Brescian press
- The birth of the aeronautic terminology
- Gabriele D'Annunzio at the Brescia meeting
- Mass myths of the early century
- Aviation in Brescia: The Sixth Stormo of Ghedi
- Pilots and designers in Brescia
As can be seen by the list, the book is not primarily written for airplane nuts. The subjects are varied and a couple of them are perhaps a bit peripheral. This of course reflects that an aviation meeting in 1909 was not just an air show, but a public display of a fantastic emerging technology, which attracted huge crowds, celebrities and media.
It's a book with much text and the few illustrations are collected at the end. I know enough Italian to be able to understand the content of a text, but unfortunately not enough to be able to read for pleasure, so I spent my efforts on the parts that focus on the meeting itself and the persons involved. These are well-researched, for example killing the myth of "the first victim of Italian aviation" Enea Rossi, but they don't go into much detail about airplanes and flights. The illustrations are not very many and not very well reproduced.
Several books have been written about the 1909 Brescia meeting (see the listing on the meeting references page), and at least for non-Italian aviation buffs this should perhaps not be the first choice. It's not expensive though (today it can be found for EUR 10.20 at amazon.it), so I don't regret adding it to the collection.
Facts:
"A Brescia oggi si vola - Le vicende del circuito aereo di Montechiari tra cronaca e storia"
Paperback, 17x24 cm, 194 pages, 19 illustrations
Language: Italian
Editor: Massimo Ferrari
Published by: EDUCatt - Ente per il Diritto allo Studio Universitario dell'Università Cattolica, Milano, 2012
ISBN: 978-88-8311-890-6