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The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies
Ballantine Books
May 2014
On Sale: May 6, 2014
448 pages
ISBN: 034553803X
EAN: 9780345538031
Kindle: B00GL3MGTI
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
From acclaimed historian Lawrence Goldstone comes a
thrilling narrative of courage, determination, and
competition: the story of the intense rivalry that fueled
the rise of American aviation.
The feud between this nation’s great air pioneers, the
Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss, was a collision of
unyielding and profoundly American personalities. On one
side, a pair of tenacious siblings who together had solved
the centuries-old riddle of powered, heavier-than-air
flight. On the other, an audacious motorcycle racer whose
innovative aircraft became synonymous in the public mind
with death-defying stunts. For more than a decade, they
battled each other in court, at air shows, and in the
newspapers. The outcome of this contest of wills would shape
the course of aviation history—and take a fearsome toll on
the men involved.
Birdmen sets
the engrossing story of the Wrights’ war with Curtiss
against the thrilling backdrop of the early years of manned
flight, and is rich with period detail and larger-than-life
personalities: Thomas Scott Baldwin, or “Cap’t Tom” as he
styled himself, who invented the parachute and almost
convinced the world that balloons were the future of
aviation; John Moisant, the dapper daredevil who took to the
skies after three failed attempts to overthrow the
government of El Salvador, then quickly emerged as a
celebrity flyer; and Harriet Quimby, the statuesque
silent-film beauty who became the first woman to fly across
the English Channel. And then there is Lincoln Beachey,
perhaps the greatest aviator who ever lived, who dazzled
crowds with an array of trademark twists and dives—and best
embodied the romance with death that fueled so many of
aviation’s earliest heroes.
A dramatic story
of unimaginable bravery in the air and brutal competition on
the ground, Birdmen is at once a thrill ride through
flight’s wild early years and a surprising look at the
personal clash that fueled America’s race to the skies.
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