Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

The Wright brothers / David McCullough.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2015Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover editionDescription: 320 pages, 48 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1476728747 (hardcover)
  • 9781476728742 (hardcover)
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
1. Beginnings -- 2. The dream takes hold -- 3. Where the winds blow -- 4. Unyielding resolve -- 5. December 17, 1903 -- 6. Out at Huffman prairie -- 7. A capital exhibit A -- 8. Triumph at Le Mans -- 9. The crash -- 10. A time like no other -- 11. Causes for celebration -- Epilogue.
Summary: "As he did so brilliantly in THE GREAT BRIDGE and THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS, David McCullough once again tells a dramatic story of people and technology, this time about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly, Wilbur and Orville Wright"--Provided by publisher.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 629.13 M133 Available 33111007996941
Adult Book Adult Book Northport Library NonFiction 629.13 M133 Available 33111007350420
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

#1 New York Times bestseller

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 a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. 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.

Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did?

David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Far 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. 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.

When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. 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. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed.

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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 303-308) and index.

1. Beginnings -- 2. The dream takes hold -- 3. Where the winds blow -- 4. Unyielding resolve -- 5. December 17, 1903 -- 6. Out at Huffman prairie -- 7. A capital exhibit A -- 8. Triumph at Le Mans -- 9. The crash -- 10. A time like no other -- 11. Causes for celebration -- Epilogue.

"As he did so brilliantly in THE GREAT BRIDGE and THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS, David McCullough once again tells a dramatic story of people and technology, this time about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly, Wilbur and Orville Wright"--Provided by publisher.

Powered by Koha