AEROFLOT – Fly Soviet: A Visual History

The compact format makes this book easy to read and handle. Although the subject matter might be considered niche, this comprehensively illustrated publication is very accessible. The book design itself is great, and it's worth mentioning the evocative ephemera on every page – baggage tickets, aircraft sales brochures, even ashtrays – remember when aircraft had those?The narrative arc is essentially the story of aviation in the USSR, because as the book explains, there were no competitors to the state run airline. The text traces the development of the airline and its aircraft, from the earliest biplanes through to 'Concordski' and beyond, following technical advances and of course, disasters.This fascinating book is a must for anyone interested in this 'parallel universe of aviation for 70 years.'

As others have noted, this is printed in something like A6 format, which is very strange for a book that is at least 50% about pictures and graphics. Textually, be aware that this is also a fairly simple history of the evolution of Aeroflot from its various progenitors, but doesn't get into any depth about the management or operation of the airline or the engineering. This makes the small format harder to forgive, as the visual content really carries most of the weight here.

Think twice about this purchase. The book is not much bigger than a pocket diary - which is bizarre given that it is all about a visual history. I should have picked up on that but didn’t. It has many great images, but they are tiny. This should have been produced in at least A5 size to be able to enjoy and take in the images. It is a good book but be prepared to be disappointed in size, given the steep price demanded.

It is really a great piece of history but its size (not number of pages) is smaller than a regular book, it feels more like a pocket book format than a book. For the graphical treasure that it is, a bigger size would be more adequate.