author
b. 1900
Best known for a lively 1918 introduction to flight for young readers, this early aviation writer helped explain a brand-new technology in clear, accessible language. Very little biographical information appears to survive, which gives the work an added sense of historical curiosity.
by Haywood Leslie Davis
Haywood Leslie Davis is a little-documented American author credited on Aviation book, published in New York by McLoughlin Brothers in 1918. Library of Congress and Internet Archive records identify him as “Haywood Leslie, 1900-,” which suggests he was remarkably young when this book appeared.
Aviation book was written as juvenile nonfiction, introducing readers to airplanes, aeronautics, and the fast-moving world of early flight. Modern public-domain editions and Project Gutenberg have helped keep the book available for new generations interested in how aviation was explained during and just after its pioneering years.
Beyond that publication, reliable biographical details are scarce in the sources reviewed. Because so little has been confirmed, Davis is best remembered today through this surviving work rather than through a well-documented personal history.