Pithy Primer

Assen Jordanolf, at 18, built the first airplane in Bulgaria. Year later he was a Bulgarian War ace, flying on the Salonika front. When the War ended, and the Neuilly treaty left Bulgaria one plane, he flew that until it was wrecked by a hurricane. In 1921 he heard that $1,000,000 was waiting in the U. S. for anyone who would fly around the world. He came over to collect.

Handsome, 42-year-old Assen Jordanoff has never flown around the world, but in the last few years he has collected lots of money. In his early U. S. years he was barnstormer, instructor (he gave a ground lesson to the late Thomas Alva Edison), movie consultant and test pilot. By 1929 he was able to set down his flying notions in good plain English in newspapers and magazines. In 1932 he turned out a book, Flying, and How To Do It, that sold mightily for a dollar. On the strength of this, Funk & Wagnalls engaged him to write a $2.50 book, Your Wings.

In Your Wings, in simple, first-person, instructor-to-student dialogue, Jordanoff told how to fly, prudently prefacing the course with lectures on the history of flying, aerodynamics and how to use a parachute. Through 27 chapters he guided the student off the ground, through rudimentary flight, and back to earth again; told him about motors, propellers, wing lift, etc. ; took off with him again for turns, climbs, glides, later for stalls and spins and aerobatics; sent him soloing; proceeding thence through discussions of "avigation," instruments, fuels, radio, accessories, etc.

Assen Jordanoff brightened his book with hundreds of lucid and often humorous illustrative drawings and diagrams, spiced it with asides like: "The difference between a three-point landing and a one-point landing is that after the first you can fly the plane again. . . . Being playful close to the ground may mean an extra order of lilies for your neighborhood florist."

Your Wings was published in January 1937. Before long, flying schools began to recommend it to students. Airlines, instrument companies, even CCC camps bought it. Tennessee, where flying courses are provided in State-run air schools, made it a textbook. Your Wings got its mightiest circulation zoom last spring, when the Soviet Government cornered the Russian rights and distributed 100,000 copies.

Last week Your Wings, still a best selling book on aviation, seemed headed for another zoom. With the Civil Aeronautics Authority starting a drive to train 20,000 pilots annually in U. S. colleges and universities, Assen Jordanoff's dialogues were easily the most readable preliminary instructions available.

As a companion book to Your Wings, Funk & Wagnalls last fall published Jordanoff's Through the Overcast, a course in weather and instrument flying done in the same pithy, well-illustrated style. By itself and packaged with Your Wings it has thus far sold 10,000 copies in the U. S., is still going at the rate of about 500 a week.

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