Without a Trace

Pilot and aviation journalist Sylvia Wrigley collects true stories of aircraft and passengers that vanished, cases that baffled investigators for years. The first of two volumes runs chronologically, from a crewed balloon carried across the English Channel just before the golden age of aviation to a top-secret spy plane lost at the peak of the Cold War. Every case sets out the historical context, the official accident reports and the news coverage of the time, and introduces the crews, bystanders and rescuers involved. Wrigley lays out the popular theories, explains aviation jargon and narrows each disappearance down to its most likely explanations. The cases take in airships, military jets and commercial airliners.

A reader of The CEO Library named it, through an anonymous form, as one of the three best books they read in 2019.