The Wright Brothers

Description

1 New York Times bestseller 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 a
winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers
from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe
what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-
air, powered machine carrying a pilot. Who were these men and how was it that
they achieved what they did? David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer
Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville
Wright. Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who
happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage and
determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless
curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. The house they
lived in had no electricity or indoor plumbing, but there were books aplenty,
supplied mainly by their preacher father, and they never stopped reading. When
they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was
unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever
seen. That they had no more than a public high school education, little money
and no contacts in high places, never stopped them in their “mission” to take
to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time
they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed. In this
thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches
of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and
more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the
human side of the Wright Brothers’ story, including the little-known
contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have
gone differently for them. Read more

Features:

Product Details:

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Later prt. edition (May 5, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1476728747
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 42
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.53 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.3 x 9.25 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #34,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #13 in Aviation History (Books) #25 in History of Technology #120 in Scientist Biographies
• #13 in Aviation History (Books)
• #25 in History of Technology