The Wright Brothers
by David McCollough 2015 / 321 pgs History

December 17th, 2003, while onboard an E-3B Sentry, I watched small dots on the monitor move one by one over the location designated as Kill Devils Hill, North Carolina.  Each dot was an different aircraft that spanned over 100 years.
Witnessing the centennial of flight and flying at the same spot the Wright Brothers did 100 years prior causes one to pause and smile.  In 2015, my family visited Kill Devils Hill and saw the Wright Brothers’ exact location of that historic flight.

Naturally, I was eager to read the story of the Wright Brothers, Wilber, and Orville.  This book doesn’t disappoint.  It starts with their birth and then their final move to Dayton, Ohio.  Then moves into their early years as newspaper publishers and then eventually to bicycle builders.  After Wilber contracts Typhoid and is recovering, he read about a German aviator’s experiment in powered flight, that planted the seed that would change the brother’s destiny.

They set themselves to solve the challenges of powered flight.  After four years of experiments, trials, tribulations, and setbacks.  On a sandy hill in North Carolina with Orville at the controls, the Wright Flyer 1903 took off and flew 120 feet in 12 seconds.  They flew three more flights that day, the last one lasting 59 seconds.
  

The rest of the book is about their continued experiments, building the Wright Flyer’s II and III.  Then their public
displays of flights to sell the planes to the United States, Germany, and French governments.  Also, some of the
accidents at the beginning of aviation, including the first passenger who died in an aircraft accident, also the first military officer, Lt Thomas Selfridge. 

Anyone interested in the early days of flight would find this book exciting.  The first 108 pages, up to the first flight
on December 17th, 1903 was thrilling to read. After this section, the story slows down although, not challenging to
get through, sometimes it could be difficult. I’ve been to Kill Devils Hill, been on the aviation path in Dayton, Ohio, visited Huffman Prairie Field where the Wrights experimented and improved on the 1903design.  Finally, the Smithsonian and visited the original 1903 Wright Flyer brought a smile as I read about many of the
locations and aircraft that I got to see over the years.  

I would only recommend this to history or aviation buffs.  If those don’t strike your fancy, this isn’t a book for you.  I enjoyed it, even in the challenging sections.         

Enjoy a good cup of coffee and get lost in an excellent book,

Lopaka