Newhouse, former government advisor, tells the story of making and selling passenger airplanes and presents a case study from 1985 to the present of two industry giants, Boeing and its archrival, Europe's Airbus. The author paints a picture of a fiercely competitive industry that eliminates participants who misread the market; who build planes too big, too small, or too costly; who match new planes with wrong engines; or who are just unlucky. The financial stakes are enormous. Today Boeing and Airbus are the sole providers of large airplanes, and we learn about their strengths and weaknesses and how their fortunes ebbed and flowed through the years. This is also a human story of the players within these massive organizations and their very influential governments. The author concludes that each company will capture close to a 50 percent market share and "each is likely to do well much of the time and even prosper," making airlines and air travelers the winners. An excellent book.Copyright © American Library Association