Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells
the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous
brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville
Wright.
On December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur
and Orville Wright’s Wright Flyer became the first powered,
heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained
flight with a pilot aboard. The Age of Flight had begun. How
did they do it? And why? David McCullough tells the
extraordinary and truly American story of the two brothers
who changed the world.
Sons of an itinerant preacher and a mother who died young,
Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in a small side street in
Dayton, Ohio, in a house that lacked indoor plumbing and
electricity but was filled with books and a love of
learning. The brothers ran a bicycle shop that allowed them
to earn enough money to pursue their mission in life:
flight. In the 1890s flying was beginning to advance beyond
the glider stage, but there were major technical challenges
that the Wrights were determined to solve. They traveled to
North Carolina’s remote Outer Banks to test their plane
because there they found three indispensable conditions:
constant winds, soft surfaces for landings, and privacy.
Flying was exceedingly dangerous; the Wrights risked their
lives every time they flew in the years that followed.
Orville nearly died in a crash in 1908, before he was nursed
back to health by his sister, Katharine, an unsung and
important part of the brothers’ success and of McCullough’s
book. Despite their achievement, the Wrights could not
convince the US government to take an interest in their
plane until after they demonstrated its success in France,
where the government instantly understood the importance of
their achievement. Now, in this revelatory book, master
historian David McCullough draws on nearly 1,000 letters of
family correspondence—plus diaries, notebooks, and family
scrapbooks in the Library of Congress—to tell the full story
of the Wright brothers and their heroic achievement.
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