How the American airship came within a hair's breadth of replacing planes, trains, and ocean liners as dominant long-distance transport Nearly everything people think they know about airships is wrong. Few realize that prior to the Hindenburg disaster airships transported passengers without a single casualty for more than 20 years, a record unmatched by any other form of transportation. When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world's largest, most expensive and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her. In doing so it reveals how the airship came within a hair's breadth of replacing planes, trains, and ocean liners as the dominant form of long-distance transportation, and exactly what went wrong, a tale of physical courage, engineering acumen, ugly politicking and two egregious disasters.