The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough Narrated by David McCullough

Overview

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.

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.

Publishers Weekly

03/09/2015
Mechanical invention is close to a religious calling in this reverent biography of the pioneers of heavier-than-air flight. Pulitzer-winning historian McCullough (Truman) sees something exalted in the two bicycle mechanics and lifelong bachelors who lived with their sister and clergyman father in Dayton, Ohio. He finds them—especially Wilbur, the elder brother—to be cultured men with a steady drive and quiet charisma, not mere eccentrics. McCullough follows their monkish devotion to the goal of human flight, recounting their painstaking experiments in a homemade wind tunnel, their countless wrong turns and wrecked models, and their long stints roughing it on the desolate, buggy shore at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Thanks largely to their own caginess, the brothers endured years of doubt and ridicule while they improved their flyer. McCullough also describes the fame and adulation that the brothers received after public demonstrations in France and Washington, D.C., in 1908 cemented their claims. His evident admiration for the Wrights leads him to soft-pedal their crasser side, like their epic patent lawsuits, which stymied American aviation for years. Still, 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. Photos. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit. (May)

The Economist

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

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 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."

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 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.

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."

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."

Richmond Times-Dispatch - Doug Childers

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

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."

The Boston Globe - Buzzy Jackson

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

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."

Library Journal - Audio

07/01/2015
Most Americans learn at a young age about the Wright Brothers and their momentous flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, in 1906 but know little beyond the basic facts. Now McCullough (Truman) brings readers the story of how the brothers, with only high school educations, were able successfully to design, build, and fly the first heavier-than-air machine carrying a human. Although the book starts out slowly, it gains momentum as McCullough takes readers step by step through the invention and early flights, especially at Kitty Hawk, to the exciting times later when the brothers flew ever higher and longer for large crowds in France and England as well as in the United States, risking their lives with each attempt. Both brothers sustained injuries in serious crashes. The author, a flight enthusiast himself, does a capable job narrating. VERDICT This book will appeal to McCullough's many fans, to history buffs, and to readers interested in a story that celebrates the American Dream. ["Highly recommended for academicians interested in the history of flight, transportation, or turn-of-the-century America; general readers; and all libraries": LJ 4/1/15 starred review of the S. & S. hc.]—Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Library Journal

★ 04/01/2015
McCullough (John Adams; 1776) effectively blends impeccable writing with historical rigor and strong character definition in his biography of Wright brothers Wilbur, the abstract thinker and introvert; and Orville, the extrovert and hands-on doer. They had limited formal education, with the author instead attributing his subjects' success to industry, imagination, and persistence, as seen in their early enterprises as newspaper publishers, printers, and bicycle salesmen in Dayton, OH. Credit is also accorded to their widowed father, Bishop Milton Wright, as well as their sister Katharine for their support of "Ullam" (Wilbur) and "Bubs" (Orville). Highlights of McCullough's narrative include his discussions of the Wrights' innovative conception of wing-warping as a means of flight control; the brothers' first controlled, powered, and sustained heavier-than-air human flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, on December 17, 1903; the issuance of the Wright flying machine patent #821,393 on May 22, 1906; the Ohioans' ongoing search for markets abroad; and the elder Wright's perfect flying demonstrations at Le Mans, France, even as Orville was nearly killed in a similar performance before army brass at Fort Myer, VA. The author closes with the incorporation of the Wright Company, patent infringement suits filed against competitor Glenn Curtiss, and the deaths of Wilbur (1912), Milton (1917), Katharine (1929), and Orville (1948). VERDICT A signal contribution to Wright historiography. Highly recommended for academicians interested in the history of flight, transportation, or turn-of-the-century America; general readers; and all libraries.—John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

MAY 2015 - AudioFile

David McCullough’s reading of his new biography of the Wright Brothers is a stellar production on every count, and a supremely satisfying listening experience. McCullough’s calm, avuncular voice, familiar to millions from his PBS productions, is for many of us the voice of history itself. In the Wrights he sees exemplified the values of courage, character, and perseverance, which he has honored in book after book, never with such unqualified admiration as here. McCullough concentrates on the first decade of the 1900s— the Wrights’ years of labor and invention and a period of unparalleled public excitement their first flights inspired in Europe and America. The text is concise, rich in telling and illuminating detail. You feel you’re not just listening, but seeing the story unfold before your eyes. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

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:	2940170456116
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/05/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	679,739

Read an Excerpt

The Wright Brothers
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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