Air Disasters is not a comprehensive survey of crashers and catastrophes - and looks at 20 of the most significant in the last 30 from the 1972 crash of a Turkish Airlines DC-10 to the fatal plunge of a Swissair in flight off the waters of Nova Scotia. Between these two dates such tragedies as the TAMU Fairchild Hitler accident in the Chilean mountains, forever immortalized in the film Alive; the 1977 PanAm 747 and KLM Boeing 747 collision on the runway in the Canary Islands - still the most catastrophic aviation disaster interms of loss of life; the American Airlines D-10 crash over Chicago in 1979. While the stories in this book are filled with past tragedies, they are also about hopes for the future. Although they deal with the disatrous loss of machines, these accounts are also stories of people - often brave people in the face of great danger - and if lessons can be learned to prevent the recurrence of these catastrophes, those who died so tragically will not have done so in vain.
This was a book I used as a reference for a college paper I was writing on air disaster history. It's fully illustrated with plenty of photos. Tons of information. A great reference.
If you enjoy reading about this topic this book does not disappoint. Each chapter is dedicated to a separate incident. The level of detail is satisfying, not excessive.