American Pop-Icons: The 747: How the Jumbo Jet Became a Global Icon

American Pop-Icons: The 747
How the Jumbo Jet Became a Global Icon

It was more than a plane. The Boeing 747 changed how we saw the world-and how the world saw us.

When it debuted in 1970, the 747 was the largest, most ambitious commercial aircraft ever built. But its true power was cultural. The "Queen of the Skies" transformed air travel into a new kind of mass experience-one shaped by Cold War optimism, jet-set glamour, and American soft power.

In this fascinating new cultural history in the best-selling American Pop: Icons series, author Taylor Prescott explores how the 747 became a global icon: from its origins as an audacious engineering gamble, to its starring roles in Hollywood blockbusters and luxury branding, to its surprising afterlife as a symbol of nostalgia and lost possibility in an era of climate anxiety.

Drawing on design history, cinema, advertising, fashion, and international politics, this book traces the 747's flight through the collective imagination. It is a story of ambition, aspiration, and the complicated legacies of 20th-century technology-told through the image of the plane that made the world feel smaller, faster, and more connected than ever before.