During my oral comprehensive examination as a Ph.D. student at Auburn University, aviation historian James R. Hansen, author of the Neil Armstrong biography First Man, asked about the benefits and shortcomings of biography as a methodological approach to history. The prominence of biographies on bestseller lists shows that readers appreciate approaching historical events and themes through the experiences, hopes, and struggles of other human beings. Yet too much focus on a single individual can substitute a nuanced analysis of the complex forces behind historical change with simplified discussions of the subject’s innate ability. At the extreme, this leads to the rightly maligned “genius inventor/entrepreneur” narrative that remains tenaciously embedded within business history, the history of science, and the history of technology, or the similarly myopic heroic flyer trope within aviation history. How to provide relatable historical actors while tempering the tendency toward hero worship remains a constant balancing act for biographical histories.

Edward M. Young seeks to walk this line in Aviation as a Business. Building upon prior studies from F. Robert van der Linden, Dominik Pisano, Jacob Vander Muellen, M. Houston Johnson V, and myself, Young centers his narrative on the activities of Clement M. Keys, a frequent yet largely tertiary figure in studies of U.S. interwar aviation. Young draws upon historian Thomas P. Hughes and economist Joseph Schumpeter to present Keys as a crucial post-invention system builder whose vision and abilities helped transition the airplane from a reckless novelty to a safe and economical means of transportation, positioning him alongside such “manager-entrepreneurs and financier-entrepreneurs” as Samuel Insull for electrification and Edward H. Harriman for the railroads (p. 4). An insightful analysis of Keys’s years as a Classics teacher in Ontario, a New York finance writer, and a Wall Street investor offers insight into the factors that shaped his approach to the aircraft business once he entered the field as director of the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation in 1916.

Through clear and effective prose, Young uses Keys’s efforts to “turn aviation into a business” as a framing device for analyzing the crucial events and debates that defined the aircraft industry in a period of uncertainty and transition (p. 6). Young vividly recreates Keys’s frustration in the face of seemingly endless changes in the wartime aircraft program; his efforts to mitigate the devastating effects that the postwar procurement contraction had on the nascent industry; his decision to purchase the near insolvent Curtiss Corporation in 1920; his fight for recognition of design rights in military aircraft procurement in order to support sustained corporate engineering programs; his role in securing passage of the Air Mail Act, the Air Commerce Act, and the Air Corps and Navy Acts that, collectively, provided the necessary legislative foundation for the postwar aircraft industry; his efforts to establish and operate pioneering airlines National Air Transport and Transcontinental Air Transport; and the industry’s shift toward consolidation that ultimately led to the establishment of Curtiss-Wright in 1929.

Young’s analysis shines in discussions of how Keys merged the worlds of aviation and finance to secure capital for an industry widely considered to be a highly speculative investment. The author’s ability to disentangle the many tentacles of Keys’s corporate interests, illuminate the complex relationship among the multiple subsidiaries and affiliated companies of Curtiss and Curtiss-Wright, and navigate the web of disparate constituencies at the corporate, industry, and national levels—likely aided by his own personal experience in the financial sector—is to be commended. Although the book’s primary focus on Keys does not allow for the comparative study required to fully support Young’s assertion that he was “the most remarkable” among his contemporary aeronautical industrialists, the author effectively shows that Keys played a foundational role in the industry’s precarious transition from crash wartime program to a (relatively) secure manufacturing and transportation business (p. 5).

The hoped-for explosion in private flying that Keys based much of his plans around never materialized, and Curtiss-Wright pivoted away from its unprofitable civilian ventures to survive the post-1929 economic downturn. As his expansive dream withered, Keys’s tenure at Curtiss-Wright soon came to an end. Young details how Keys used his positions as president of Curtiss-Wright and the holding company North American Aviation to finance millions of dollars’ worth of call loans through his brokerage firm, C. M. Keys & Co. (p. 215). Only when lenders started calling in these loans in the wake of Black Tuesday did he disclose these activities to his lawyer and a fellow North American Aviation board member, and the three decided to keep the matter between themselves “for whatever reason” (p. 216). Despite herculean efforts to make good on his debts, Keys could not hide the fact that he “had violated the trust of his fellow directors” and resigned from Curtiss-Wright in 1931 without any public recognition of his illicit activities (p. 236).

Young skillfully utilizes Keys’s unique perspective to shed light on events that defined the interwar aircraft industry. As such, his study complements the current historiography rather than challenging existing interpretations or offering a radical reinterpretation. For a book explicitly labeled a biography, we learn very little about Keys’s life away from Curtiss. Personal relationships with friends and confidants (such as his longtime associate Howard Coffin) are unexplored, his politics remain unknown, and his wife Indiola only makes a brief appearance in relation to her husband’s stock purchases in a single paragraph in Chapter 6 (p. 199). Young’s admiration for Keys at times betrays a level of subject bias that precludes a well-rounded analysis, perhaps best illustrated in his discussion of Keys’s embezzlement. While recognizing that Keys “used North American Aviation’s money as if it was his own,” Young dismisses these actions as “uncharacteristic” and “unexplainable” lapses in judgment rather than a window into a multifaceted personality (pp. 212, 236, 251). Nevertheless, Young’s study of a “key” system builder during the tumultuous post-WWI period sheds new light on the hopes, successes, and struggles of corporate leaders as they endeavored to secure a profitable foundation for the American aircraft industry.