The flight engineer reassures the crew of the struggling freight airplane, "OK, it"s clear now." One second later, the plane explodes on the ground, taking three lives and eight million dollars of material with it. This collection of horrific crashes includes overviews of the events, descriptions of the flights, transcripts of the cockpit recordings, and explanations of the investigations and probable causes, ranging from the crash of the Zeppelin airship Hindenburg of 1937 to the events of 11 September 2001 and the loss of the NASA space shuttle Columbia in 2003. Sturkey, a retired military and commercial pilot, writes for fellow professionals but carefully considers general readers with interests in aviation, focusing on the educational aspects of each crash, giving sound advice ("No one ever collided with the sky,") and providing photos and illustrations of events and their aftermath. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)