My quest is to one day be an expert on aviation history. The problem is I could spend a lifetime reading books just on the 8th Air Force in '43-'45 and I'm sure half of them wouldn't be worth reading.
Do you guys have any that you'd recommend? I'll go for hard analysis or softer reading. I'm a big fan of the pre-1950 period but anything is good as long as it's relevant to planes, pilots, or aviation events.
Age of Airpower by Martin Van Creveld is an analysis of the role of airpower from its inception to the present day. I don't agree with all of its conclusions, but the arguments are well made and impeccably sourced.
Clash of Wings by Walter J. Boyne is an enjoyable overview of the WWII air war.
For memoirs, I highly enjoyed Robin Olds' Fighter Pilot. It covers his entire career from having possibly the only P-38 glider-mode kill of the war through his exploits in Vietnam in F-4's. Ignore the title--God is my CoPilot--of Robert Lee Scott Jr.'s memoir, as it is not a preachy harangue but rather is a fascinating account of the author's experiences in China with the AVG (Flying Tigers).
Round out your bomber history with Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan by Barrett Tillman.
And if you ever get the chance, visit the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton Ohio. Since it's free, the price is right! Heck, i'll give you a tour.
Here are two coffee table books
Flight: The Complete History by R G Grant 2003
Aircraft: The Definitive Visual History by Phillip Whitman which was published in 2013. In this case, I think the older book is better, even if it does go into Space Flight towards the end. It has more text than the Whitman book.
Are you interested in the history of aeronautical engineering or just aviation? I have done work on the former but really can't speak much to the latter (except as an interested non-professional).
I enjoyed A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918, but as the title suggests, it isn't a technical history of aviation.