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The Greatest Man in the World

James Thurber

First published 1951
Type Short Fiction
Length Short Story

The scrappy and abrasive aviation engineer Jack Smurch achieves a non-stop flight around the world in an old monoplane which has attached strange floating fuel tanks.

Borderline speculative fiction, first published in the New Yorker, February 21, 1931.

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
1951 Cover The Fireside Book of Flying Stories Simon & Schuster Anthology 239
January 1968 Cover Stories and Storytellers Addison-Wesley Anthology 195
July 1974 Cover Happy Endings Bobbs-Merrill Company Anthology 1
1975 Cover Skyriders: Man's Conquest of the Air Blackie Anthology 141
January 1979 Cover The Greatest Man in the World Perfection Learning Collection
June 2011 Cover The James Thurber Audio Collection: Fables and Selected Stories HarperAudio Collection |4
2016 Cover The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Penguin Books Collection 82