UCI Professor Writes on Zeppelins’ Drama

Henry Cord Meyer, who grew up hearing tales from his German immigrant mother about Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and his great rigid airships, is the author of a new book in the Smithsonian History of Aviation Series titled “Airshipmen, Businessmen and Politics, 1890-1940.”

Meyer, a Laguna Beach resident and a professor emeritus of history at UC Irvine, offers 10 essays that focus on the human drama of the airship’s development in Germany, England and the United States as told through the lives of Zeppelin and other key figures.

The book (Smithsonian Institution Press; $45) examines how the airship was manipulated for military, commercial and political purposes and includes rare photographs and illustrations culled from Meyer’s two decades of research in public and private archives.

Meyer is the author of two books on Germany, in addition to numerous articles on German social and political history.