Reviews
“…Boyne, a
former director of the National Air and Space Museum and author of Weapons of
Desert Storm (1991), has written an absorbing book, rich in detail.” –
Booklist
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The names Wilbur and Orville Wright stand out in history as the
inventors of the airplane, but lost in history are those who in the
closing years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the
twentieth shared the same passion: to develop the first powered
aircraft. Some spent entire lives and fortunes chasing the dream,
including men like the embittered Augustus Herring, who'd flown a
heavier than air machine for several seconds in 1898; the pompous Samuel
Pierpont Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution, who was backed by the
US War Department, and even the legendary American inventor Alexander
Graham Bell. These men, along with European competitors such as Louis
Blériot, chased what many believed to be the impossible dream of manned,
powered flight. But the Wright Brothers were the first to succeed,
thanks to a combination of courage, genius, and downright stubbornness!
Many followed in their footsteps, including such arch-competitors as
Glenn Curtiss.
The Wright Brothers' father was a huge factor who
dominated their lives, trying to control their every thought and action.
A bishop of the United Brethren Church, Milton Wright wanted his sons
to succeed in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, not risk their lives.
Bishop Wright saw no reason for his sons to risk everything on an
isolated, windy beach in faraway North Carolina a beach called Kitty
Hawk. He tried to quash their dream, but Orville and Wilbur rebelled,
ultimately proving the impossible by flying on December 17, 1903. They
brought the dawn of aviation, the industry that dominated the twentieth
century and set the stage for the space race.
“…Boyne, a
former director of the National Air and Space Museum and author of Weapons of
Desert Storm (1991), has written an absorbing book, rich in detail.” –
Booklist
May 16, 2003