The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

McCullough does not write a comprehensive biography here. Rather he gives you the most interesting and pertinent parts of the Wright brothers' lives and how they worked out the problem of flight. McCullough does a good job of giving only facts, without embellishing it with either opinion or imagined detail, but still keeps the story inspired and engaging. By the time the book is done, you get a sense of who these men were and the qualities that drove them to be the first to fly.

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 But it isn’t true,” Orville responded emphatically, “to say we had no special advantages . . . the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”

 It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into it and they had the faith. John T. Daniels

 They were always thinking of the next thing to do; they didn’t waste much time worrying about the past. Charlie Taylor

 Their patient perseverance, their calm faith in ultimate success, their mutual consideration of each other, might have been considered phenomenal in any but men who were well born and well reared. These flights, or spurts at flying, they always made in turn; and after every trial the two inventors, quite apart, held long and confidential consultation, with always some new gain; they were getting nearer and nearer the moment when sustained flight would be made, for a machine that could maintain itself aloft two minutes might just as well stay there an hour, if everything were as intended. Wertherner( a teacher that helped them)