The Wright matriarch, mother of the seven Wright children (two of these children young), was very shy in public but an important motivator in the lives of her children. Learning of the closeness and support of the Wright family, despite strong personalities and opinions from many of the members, the importance of family is highlighted. At the start, the reading seems dry but once I became used to McCullough's writing and his voice, I was entranced by the story. This is my first book by David McCullough and my first time hearing his voice. I've known of the Wright Brothers for most of my life, of course, but I really never knew very much about them until I listened to this audiobook. 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.

Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed.

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. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. 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.

Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did?ĭavid McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.įar 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. 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. On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. 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. Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough