Airlines of the Jet Age. By R.E.G. Davies. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Scholarly Press, 2011. Maps. Tables. Photographs. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 461. $99.95 ISBN: 978-0-9788460-8-4

Noted airlines historian and author R.E.G. Davies died in July 2011, shortly after completing this final work on the air-transport industry. Davies, who had retired to his native England after a distinguished career as Curator of Air Transport at the National Air and Space Museum, was involved in writing more than twenty books about the airlines and their aircraft.

In general, this effort picks up where his 1960s classic, A History of the World's Airlines, left off. After devoting the first quarter of the book to a summary of airline history through the mid 1960s, the...