5 Reasons to Read David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers

It’s David McCullough
We don’t throw the term “national treasure” around lightly, but David McCullough is not your run-of-the-mill historian with just one Pulitzer Prize. He has two (for Truman and John Adams), and is perhaps the most respected and widely-read modern writer documenting American history. His works are  accessible, informative, deeply researched, and richly detailed. They bring their subjects to life, revealing how remarkable people and unprecedented events shaped the world we live in.
The Wrights were the Jobs and Zuckerberg of their time
We’re living in a moment in history where technology is ascendant. From Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg, our modern-day heroes are the tech entrepreneurs changing the way we live. That makes an examination of Orville and Wilbur Wright an ideal book for the current era. The Wright brothers transformed the world, and yet are often relegated to a brief mention in history classes or treated as curiosities from the distant past.
The Wright brothers have more to teach us
For many people, the story of the Wright Brothers begins with their historic 1903 flight near Kitty Hawk, as if they did not exist prior to that momentous occasion. McCullough’s book offers us an opportunity to learn how two men from Dayton, Ohio—preacher’s sons who did not attend college, and who were bicycle makers and salesmen prior to their invention of the first powered airplane—could possibly have achieved so much. The Wright brothers’ story is perhaps the quintessential American one: hard work, active imaginations, and hands-on engineering resulted in an incredible achievement.
The Wright brothers deserve more attention
In many ways, we’re still making up for the failures of our ancestors, whose reactions to the first powered flight ranged from dubious (the Wrights’ hometown Dayton newspaper refused to write a story about it because of the brief duration of the flights) to completely unimpressed. It didn’t help that a second demonstration in 1904 resulted in engine troubles and no actual flying. While the lack of attention allowed the brothers to perfect their design (often by repeated crashes, until the third version of their plane was stable enough to fly for significant periods), their legacy demands that we make up for this failure to recognize history as it happened.
Katharine will get her due
Orville and Wilbur may be the most celebrated and recognized Wright children, but they had siblings—and their sister Katharine was, for a time, almost as famous as her brothers. Yet today, she is barely mentioned. While her contributions to the design and construction of the first airplanes were minimal, her place in the lives and business of her brothers was important, and she achieved a great deal in a time when women still couldn’t vote. Her story is also one of heartbreak: her late-blooming romance and marriage to an old school friend caused inexplicable drama with Orville, who refused to speak to her afterward. McCullough, a thorough historian who digs deeply into the personal lives of his subjects, gives Katharine’s role in history the attention it deserves.
Any new book by David McCullough is cause for celebration, and The Wright Brothers is no exception.
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