Knights of the Air.

MAITLAND, Lester J. [Franklin Delano Roosevelt].

Item Number: 108923

Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1929.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s copy of the first edition of Air Corps Commander Lester J. Maitland’s history of early aviation. Octavo, original cloth, pictorial endpapers, illustrated with photographs including frontispiece. From the library of Franklin Delano Roosevelt with his ownership inscription to the front free endpaper, “Given me by Peter Brady, Oct. 1929, Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Signed by Roosevelt in the month of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which ushered in changes to the American economy and would later set the stage for Roosevelt’s success in winning the Presidency in 1932. Additionally signed by the author above Roosevelt’s inscription, “Lester Maitland.” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned the first presidential library in the United States, built under his personal direction between 1939 and 1940. The library came to house numerous books and photographs, 275,000 feet of movie film, and 300 sound recordings. Very good in a very good dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

Aviation pioneer and career United States Army Air Force officer Lester J. Maitland began his career as a Reserve pilot in the U.S. Army Air Service during World War I and rose to brigadier general in the Michigan Air National Guard following World War II. In 1927 Maitland and Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger completed the first transpacific flight from California to Hawaii, flying the modified transport Bird of Paradise. Although the recognition accorded them was less in comparison with the adulation given Charles Lindbergh for his transatlantic flight only five weeks earlier, Maitland and Hegenberger's feat was arguably more significant from a navigational stand point.