Although World War I was fought and won in the trenches, aviation emerged as the most advanced and innovative technological arm of battle, epitomizing the new total warfare as it meshed the front and the rear, the military and the civilian. The Great War in the Air is a comprehensive study of the development and significance of airpower during World War I. This history compares military, political, technological, industrial, and cultural aspects of airpower in the greater combatant powers (France, Germany, and England) and the lesser powers (Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the United States).

Geared to both general readers and scholars, The Great War in the Air penetrates the heroic veneer of the fighter pilots' exploits, using autobiographical and biographical material to discuss the aviators' lives—the thrills, the risks, the stresses—and their attitudes toward aerial combat.

Starting in 1909 with the beginnings of military aviation and the aviation industry and ending with their catastrophic postwar contraction, the book examines the totality of the air war, its heroism, romantic myths, politics, strategies, and cost in men and materiel. John H. Morrow, Jr. also elaborates on the advancements in aircraft and engine technology and production during airpower's development into a viable and threatening military weapon within a decade of its origins.