The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers is a 2015 nonfiction book by David McCullough touching on both biography and American history. It won the Combs Gates Award from the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the Ohioana Book Award. McCullough has authored several books on history and has twice won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. A graduate of Yale University, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006.

Summary

The book begins with the Wright family’s background. The first chapter describes the work and family life of the parents, Bishop Milton Wright and Susan Wright, before delving into the childhoods of Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine. The author also describes the adult Wilbur and Orville, comparing them based on a photograph in the frontispiece and expanding on this to include their personalities. Chapter 2 starts in 1896, the year the flying bug really bit the brothers, and continues through mid-1900, when they prepared to test a glider at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The third chapter covers test flights at Kitty Hawk during 1900 and 1901. It describes the brothers’ living conditions at the rudimentary camp they set up and explains the steps they took to test their plane and improve its design—including closely observing the area’s many seabirds. The next chapter describes how Wilbur and Orville made and tested an updated version of their Flyer. This required recalculating from scratch the necessary wing curvature, as the accepted figures from earlier aviation pioneers didn’t work. After testing their Flyer in 1902, they left Kitty Hawk confident that they’d solved the problem of flight.

Chapter 5 covers the first successful powered flight, as the brothers added a motor and propellers to their Flyer and tested it again at Kitty Hawk. The next chapter describes further test flights as they perfected their plane, this time at a pasture called Huffman Prairie outside their hometown of Dayton, Ohio—and their first attempts to interest governments in buying it. The latter endeavor led to Wilbur’s journey to France and Germany for business negotiations, which is the focus of Chapter 7.

The final chapters cover the brothers’ successful demonstrations in the US and Europe in 1908 and 1909, which proved their accomplishment and brought them fame and fortune. Chapter 8 details Wilbur’s public demonstrations in Le Mans, France, while the next chapter describes Orville’s trials for the US War Department at Fort Myer, near Washington, DC. The US trial ended in a serious accident, after which Orville’s sister, Katharine, helped him through a long recuperation. Chapter 10 describes the time that all three siblings spent in France in 1909, during which Wilbur continued his public demonstrations and they all became celebrities. The last chapter covers Orville’s return to Fort Myer and his successful public flights, Wilbur’s historic first flights around New York City, and the speed with which aviation grew in 1910 alone. The Epilogue briefly reports what happened in the rest of their lives.

While this book is a partial biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright, it’s not comprehensive, as it focuses only on their aviation pursuits. The main part of the book ends in 1910, when the brothers had achieved what they set out to do and hit the peak of their popularity. In that sense, it may be more a biography of an idea—that of the brothers’ concept for crewed, powered flight. In addition, the book highlights the role of their family, particularly their sister, Katharine, in their success.