The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough Narrated by David McCullough

Overview

The #1 New York Times bestseller from David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize-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 brothers-bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio-changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe that the age of flight had begun, with the first powered machine carrying a pilot.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity. 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 and little money 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, they risked being killed.

In this “enjoyable, fast-paced tale” (The Economist), master historian David McCullough “shows as never before how two Ohio boys from a remarkable family taught the world to fly” (The Washington Post) and “captures the marvel of what the Wrights accomplished” (The Wall Street Journal). He draws on the extensive Wright family papers to profile not only the brothers but their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them. Essential reading, this is “a story of timeless importance, told with uncommon empathy and fluency...about what might be the most astonishing feat mankind has ever accomplished...The Wright Brothers soars” (The New York Times Book Review).

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Daniel Okrent

…a story of timeless importance, told with uncommon empathy and fluency…David McCullough is interested in only one thing, namely how it was possible that two autodidacts from Ohio managed to satisfy a longing that the species had harbored for centuries. The Wright Brothers is…a story, well told, about what might be the most astonishing feat mankind has ever accomplished…The Wright Brothers soars.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

…concise, exciting and fact-packed…Mr. McCullough presents all this with dignified panache, and with detail so granular you may wonder how it was all collected.

The San Antonio Express-News - David Henricks

A master storyteller. . . . The brothers’ story unfolds and develops with grace and insight in a style at which McCullough is simply the best.

The Miami Herald - Larry Lebowitz

"McCullough vividly re-creates the failures and disappointments as the Wright brothers puzzle out the scienceof bird- and insect-wing design. . . . [McCullough] continues to deliverhigh-quality material with familiar facility and grace."

The Columbus Dispatch - Margaret Quamme

"Pleasurable to read. . . . McCullough has a gift for finding the best in his subjects without losing perspective on their flaws."

Publishers Weekly

"McCullough's usual warm, evocative prose makes for an absorbing narrative; he conveys both the drama of the birth of flight and the homespun genius of America's golden age of innovation."

The Boston Globe - Buzzy Jackson

The nitty-gritty of exactly how [the Wrights] succeeded is told in fascinating detail.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Harry Levins

We all know what they did and where they did it — Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But McCullough digs deeply to find out how they did it, and why they did it, and what happened to them in the years that followed.

Kirkus Reviews

"[A] fluently rendered, skillfully focused study. . . . An educational and inspiring biography of seminal American innovators."

USA Today - Ray Locker

Few historians have captured the essence of America — its rise from an agrarian nation to the world's dominant power — like David McCullough. . . . McCullough has defined American icons and revealed new dimensions to stories that long seemed exhausted. . . . An elegant, sweeping look at the two Americans who went where no others had gone before and whose work helped create a national excellence in aviation that continues today."

Richmond Times-Dispatch - Doug Childers

"A compelling, upbeat story that underscores the importance of industriousness, creative intelligence and indomitable patience.

Booklist (starred review)

"An outstanding saga of the lives of two men who left such a giant footprint on our modern age."

Sundar Pichai

David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers is a story about two brothers and one incredible moment in American history. But it’s also a story that resonates with anyone who believes deeply in the power of technology to change lives – and the resistance some have to new innovations.

The Wall Street Journal - Roger Lowenstein

David McCullough has etched a brisk, admiring portrait of the modest, hardworking Ohioans who designed an airplane in their bicycle shop and solved the mystery of flight on the sands of Kitty Hawk, N.C. He captures the marvel of what the Wrights accomplished and, just as important, the wonder felt by their contemporaries. . . . Mr. McCullough is in his element writing about seemingly ordinary folk steeped in the cardinal American virtues—self-reliance and can-do resourcefulness.

The Economist

[An] enjoyable, fast-paced tale. . . . A fun, fast ride.

The Washington Post - Reeve Lindbergh

"McCullough’s magical account of [the Wright Brothers'] early adventures — enhanced by volumes of family correspondence, written records, and his own deep understanding of the country and the era — shows as never before how two Ohio boys from a remarkable family taught the world to fly."

Booklist

"An outstanding saga of the lives of two men who left such a giant footprint on our modern age."

Booklist

"An outstanding saga of the lives of two men who left such a giant footprint on our modern age."

Kirkus Reviews

2015-03-03
A charmingly pared-down life of the "boys" that grounds their dream of flight in decent character and work ethic. There is a quiet, stoical awe to the accomplishments of these two unprepossessing Ohio brothers in this fluently rendered, skillfully focused study by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning and two-time National Book Award-winning historian McCullough (The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, 2011, etc.). The author begins with a brief yet lively depiction of the Wright home dynamic: reeling from the death of their mother from tuberculosis in 1889, the three children at home, Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine, had to tend house, as their father, an itinerant preacher, was frequently absent. McCullough highlights the intellectual stimulation that fed these bookish, creative, close-knit siblings. Wilbur was the most gifted, yet his parents' dreams of Yale fizzled after a hockey accident left the boy with a mangled jaw and broken teeth. The boys first exhibited their mechanical genius in their print shop and then in their bicycle shop, which allowed them the income and space upstairs for machine-shop invention. Dreams of flight were reawakened by reading accounts by Otto Lilienthal and other learned treatises and, specifically, watching how birds flew. Wilbur's dogged writing to experts such as civil engineer Octave Chanute and the Smithsonian Institute provided advice and response, as others had long been preoccupied by controlled flight. Testing their first experimental glider took the Wrights over several seasons to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to experiment with their "wing warping" methods. There, the strange, isolated locals marveled at these most "workingest boys," and the brothers continually reworked and repaired at every step. McCullough marvels at their success despite a lack of college education, technical training, "friends in high places" or "financial backers"—they were just boys obsessed by a dream and determined to make it reality. An educational and inspiring biography of seminal American innovators.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171147754
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/05/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Prologue

PROLOGUE
From ancient times and into the Middle Ages, man had dreamed of taking to the sky, of soaring into the blue like the birds. One savant in Spain in the year 875 is known to have covered himself with feathers in the attempt. Others devised wings of their own design and jumped from rooftops and towers—some to their deaths—in Constantinople, Nuremberg, Perugia. Learned monks conceived schemes on paper. And starting about 1490, Leonardo da Vinci made the most serious studies. He felt predestined to study flight, he said, and related a childhood memory of a kite flying down onto his cradle.

According to brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, it began for them with a toy from France, a small helicopter brought home by their father, Bishop Milton Wright, a great believer in the educational value of toys. The creation of a French experimenter of the nineteenth century, Alphonse Pénaud, it was little more than a stick with twin propellers and twisted rubber bands, and probably cost 50 cents. “Look here, boys,” said the Bishop, something concealed in his hands. When he let go it flew to the ceiling. They called it the “bat.”

Orville’s first teacher in grade school, Ida Palmer, would remember him at his desk tinkering with bits of wood. Asked what he was up to, he told her he was making a machine of a kind that he and his brother were going to fly someday.

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