Retired naval officer and lighter-than-air veteran Vaeth offers a valuable and concise summary of the U.S. Navy's efforts to fly while buoyed by gas. The great dirigibles, of which four out of five crashed, have been the primary focus of previous similar accounts, and they are clearly and cogently dealt with here. Less covered have been the nonrigid airships, whose story began with a class of vehicles based on a British design; these served ably in World War I. The interwar period was followed by a veritable renaissance of blimps and of training men to fly them during World War II. Naval blimps pretty much died out after the war, but the swan song of U.S. Navy lighter-than-air use, the high--altitude endurance flights of Project Strato-Lab, ceased only with the coming of space flight. Besides all this, Vaeth even notes naval officers flying in balloon races, among them his friend the late Thomas Settle, who once held a world high-altitude record. Roland Green