The final stages of the conquest of the West in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century initiated a transformation surrounding the perception of the American Dream. As the decades progressed, the decreasing pursuit of a “home on the range” became increasingly replaced by the transition to an urban environment. Two major centers of urban development were Chicago and New York City, the latter demonstrating the technical prowess of human ingenuity through architecture, becoming home to the tallest buildings in the world during the 1920s. Directly linked through time and place, the unprecedented towering structures of New York City coincided with the new world of aerial domination. The skyscraper and ascension through flight led to an inevitable fusion of the image of the future: the creation of the utopian city. Visionary designers of this new city were considered the master builders, and in Impossible Heights Adnan Morshed examines the airplane and the new possibilities of architecture as projected by three prominent men who irrevocably altered urban perceptions during the interwar period. In a vigorous exposé of designs by Hugh Ferriss, Buckminster Fuller, and Norman Bel Geddes, Impossible Heights provides readers with an unprecedented scholarly correlation between flight, height, and the new American frontier.

Morshed's work sets a high standard for academic scholarship, as Impossible Heights is driven by extensive archival research presented in clear, accessible prose capable of engaging architectural historians as well as readers intrigued by the twentieth century's unquenchable reach for the skies. While there are numerous biographical and theoretical analyses of Ferriss, Fuller, and Bel Geddes, Morshed's research presents fresh material for reinterpreting how these men envisioned their future of tomorrow. By focussing on the interwar period, Morshed avoids an overemphasis on the biographical and incorporates the public milieu concerning the fascinating and potential technical advancements of the future. Equally engaging are the photographs, drawings, and advertisements generously placed throughout the text. These visuals help drive the discussion, as each figure strengthens and supports Morshed's analysis. Several images are reproduced directly from the archival materials, and in some cases original letters and drawings by Ferriss, Fuller and Bel Geddes provide visual insight into the thoughts of these influential men.

The world of tomorrow and, as Bel Geddes called him, “the man of tomorrow” represented America's infatuation with the heights. The master builder was one who was engaged in designing the city of the future while being simultaneously engaged in lifting modern man to a higher level of existence, both morally and spiritually. In an intriguing correlation, Morshed emphasizes the influence of George Gurdjieff's Fourth Way on Ferriss and Fuller through the presence of Gurdjieff's religious movement in New York City. Gurdjieff claimed that modern man needed to transcend the common world and channel into the energy of the cosmos through the Fourth Way, thereby rising above the state of modern depravity. Additionally, Bel Geddes, familiar with Nietzsche's Übermensch, joined Ferriss and Fuller in projecting the image of modern men as a type of supermen (popularly depicted in DC Comics' Superman), who, from above, envisioned the world of the metropolis below. Such religious overtones emphasized the need to purge the city environment of its evils and design the utopian city that would draw people from the rural to the trouble-free urban world of tomorrow. For Fuller, this meant providing new living spaces, through designs such as his 4D tower, which would include mass-produced standardized living environments and resolve the unhealthy living conditions of tenement housing.

Morshed provides three lengthy chapters on Ferriss, Fuller, and Bel Geddes, and in each he meticulously examines a specific project by each designer. The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929) is Ferriss's most famous collection of artistic depictions of the prominent position that the skyscraper represented for the utopian future. While Ferriss was famous for his distinct metropolitan sketches, Metropolis of Tomorrow is also a prophetic vision of man's ability to overcome the evils of the night, as many of the pieces of artwork depict the illuminated city, thereby allowing for social advancements in the metropolis, reversing the dangers of the urban night. The urban home would also need to improve modern man's superior position, and Morshed emphasizes Fuller's modernist perspective of man, machine, and dwelling in the Dymaxion House. Fuller first presented the house design in 1929, complete with an airplane in the garage, and he continued to develop the idea while striving toward mass standardization. Fuller's idealism for the future was demonstrated in his belief that “vertical is to live,” and the significance of the airplane and elevation factor into the image of the future. Ferriss's artistic perspective and Fuller's aesthetic of ascension were indirectly advanced through the panoramic vision of the future with Bel Geddes's 1939–40 New York World's Fair exhibit, Futurama. The complexity of Bel Geddes's exhibit – a nearly twenty-minute long conveyor-belt ride that carried seated people over a 35,738-square-foot landscape, as if they were flying in an airplane – astounded millions of viewers. Morshed's archival research makes clear the complexity and, in return, the popularity of Bel Geddes's future city, replete with expansive highways. As with Ferriss and Fuller, Bel Geddes intended to reshape the metropolis, although he moved the center of America from New York City to St. Louis.

It is easy to conceive – after reading Morshed's fine examination of Ferriss, Fuller, and Bel Geddes – why children from the inter- and postwar periods believed they would each own a flying machine when they grew up. The vision of the future was dominated by the new heights attainable through the designs of the master builders. Not surprisingly, the social preoccupation with the physical ascension through architecture and the growing aerial domination of the skies greatly contrasted with the tribulations on the ground, from the First World War to the Great Depression. Morshed is fully cognizant of these historical backdrops that helped Ferris, Fuller, and Bel Geddes to become recognized names during their respective periods of futuristic creativity. In a fascinating read that is enhanced with over a hundred images, Morshed's Impossible Heights brings to life this period of spectacular vision for the American metropolis.